“Your grandmother would disapprove?” Colin asked.

“Yours might,” said Mina, and her eyes glinted in a dare-you-to-be-shocked way that Stephen was beginning to find familiar. “Mine took in laundry.”

“Well,” said Stephen, “one of ours kept sheep.”

Mina blinked. “Really?” she asked, turning to look up at Stephen. “Your grandmother?”

Her expression might almost have been casual curiosity. Stephen wasn’t entirely certain otherwise, but there was a stillness about her face as she waited for his answer that suggested she was listening very carefully.

“Oh, aye,” said Colin, off beyond Mina’s gaze. “Our mother’s mother. They were very good sheep, though. And that was quite a while back. Don’t let it get around.”

“Even the bit about how good the sheep were?” Mina smiled, but the intensity left her expression and she looked away, flushing.

In the moment of silence that followed, the clock began to strike.

“Half an hour to dusk,” Stephen said, keeping his voice mildly displeased and not swearing the way he wanted to. They were at a museum, after all. “I’d best be on my way.”

“Oh,” said Mina, and stepped away from the exhibit. “All right.”

She sounded completely normal, even matter-of-fact, but she’d clearly been enjoying herself, and such outings were rare for her these days. That was at least partly Stephen’s fault.

“The two of you should stay,” Stephen said, “and take the carriage back. I’ll hire a cab easily enough.”

“But—” Mina began.

He had no wish to hear the offer that she’d surely make, well-meant as it would be. “No, I insist,” Stephen said. “I’ll make better time on my own. Colin, you’ll join me when you can.”

Meeting Mina’s eyes only briefly, he touched his hat to both of them, then strode off toward the exit.

Thirty-one

She’d written down the wrong word. Again.

Mina swore quietly into the silence of the library and swiped her pen through the offending line. Far more forceful than it needed to be, the motion carried her arm past the paper and into the inkwell, which tipped over. Black ink poured over the desk, the record Mina had been working on, and her skirt.

“Oh, bugger!”

She grabbed the inkwell and righted it, then mopped frantically at the pool of ink, first with the now-ruined page of notes and then with her handkerchief. Most of the ink came off the table, thank goodness. She didn’t wish to spend her hundred pounds replacing it, and she had a feeling the entire sum wouldn’t go very far.

Her skirt was a lost cause.

“Ah, hell,” she said in more resigned tones and wiped the remaining traces of ink from the desk, then wiped off the inkwell itself. At least she could manage that much without disaster.

This was what came of losing her temper, Mina told herself in an inward voice that sounded remarkably like her mother’s. Now her skirt was ruined. She’d have to buy another, and although this one hadn’t been anywhere near her best, it hadn’t come cheaply. Getting out to buy clothing wouldn’t be easy in her current situation, either, and at least one of the MacAlasdairs was likely to do something stupid and chivalrous and embarrassing like offer to buy her another, which she couldn’t accept, and they wouldn’t understand why she couldn’t accept without even more embarrassing conversation. She could have avoided all of that if she’d just taken a little more time and care with her work.

The lecture didn’t help. Mostly, it gave Mina the urge to kick something, an urge to which she would have succumbed except that everything in the room would cost more money to replace than she’d had in her entire life, and hadn’t she done enough property damage for one day?

Instead, she sank back into her chair and sighed.

What was wrong with her tonight? Her accounts and her typing had been full of mistakes, and she’d taken none of her usual satisfaction in sorting out a jumble of unordered books or finding a new and interesting volume.

She’d finished the rest of the diary, which hadn’t been very enlightening. Toward the end, George the dragon had talked about his namesake a little and about the other dragon’s possibly tragic end.

Some do speak of other ways to mend such cases, he wrote, such as might be witchcraft, or the sacrifice of a white deer, and others yet say that having true affection among men may yet draw a man whole from his monstrous shape, but I think, as I have been taught, that there is no change and nothing for such unfortunates but death or exile.

Cheerful stuff.

She could have chosen another book from the shelves. There were plenty that looked interesting, and even a few that might deal with magic, but Mina couldn’t muster enough interest to get past the first page of anything she’d tried. She kept finding reasons to put her work aside and walk across the room or to go look out the window.

It wasn’t as if there was even anything—or anybody—to see out there.

Stephen and Colin would come back to the house in dragon form, the same way that they’d left. Unless something went horribly wrong, they’d be far too high to see from the window. But nothing was going to go horribly wrong.

They were dragons, after all. And they were flying—what was going to attack them, a flock of angry pigeons? The image did make Mina giggle, but it didn’t change her mood. She still felt aware of every second that passed.

Right, then. She wasn’t getting her work done one way or the other. Maybe a walk and a bite to eat would settle her mind. Mina stood up, glared down at the ink spot on her skirt—which had helpfully taken the form of some two-headed beast—and headed out into the hallway.

With the servants away and the lamps economically turned down, the hall was very empty and very large. Mina’s footsteps echoed on the floor, steady counterpoint to the light brush of her skirt. She shivered.

She was in a mood, and that despite getting to see the exhibition that evening. Mum would have had a bit to say about ungrateful girls with the vapors. Mina knew she herself would have said similar things if she’d been looking on from outside.

Darkness and empty houses made a good mood hard to keep, though. So did waiting up to hear news.

From the foot of the stairs, the clock ticked steadily, like a heartbeat. Its face was pale in the gloom.

Mina swallowed, told herself that she was being silly, and opened the kitchen door.

She screamed.

She didn’t mean to, and she felt completely foolish even as the sound died away, but Emily’s shriek had jarred her, for a moment, out of all pretense at rationality. She leapt and yelped just as readily as the scullery maid.

“Miss Seymour!” Emily gasped, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you—”

“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Mina, getting her breath back herself. She had to laugh a little, too. “Not really an evening for calm, is it? What are you doing back so early?”

“I came away before I thought I would,” said Emily, looking down and biting her lip. “People I was going to visit were busy. I thought if I was just in the kitchen, it wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“And it won’t,” said Mina, as cheerfully as she could manage. She could read enough of the girl’s face. Either some youthful suitor had thrown her over, or a friend had left her out in the cold. Either way, the girl needed cheering up. “It’s good to have company. Put the kettle on, will you? I’ll see if there’s any jam left.”

Searching in the pantry helped her mood a bit, but the restlessness didn’t go away entirely. It just sank down to the back of her spine.

“I was going to ask,” said Emily. “You haven’t seen Gussie tonight? Only I saw on my way in that he hadn’t touched his milk.”

“I haven’t.” Finding a pot of orange marmalade, Mina emerged from the pantry. “I wouldn’t worry. He’s probably just found another place—or a lady cat.” In London, a cat’s actual fate was likely far less pleasant, but there was no point bringing that up. “I bet he’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Hope so,” said Emily. “I know it’s foolish, but I like having animals around. My gran kept a dog back home. Mostly for the rats, but she was a nice little thing.”

“Is this your first place?” Mina asked, but she didn’t hear the answer.

As sudden and illuminating as a gas flare, the uneasy feeling she’d had before came back and swamped her, turning to real fear in the process. Mina couldn’t name the threat, but she knew that there was one—and that it would likely be deadly.

“Miss Seymour? Are you all right?”

“No,” Mina said, because she surely didn’t look it. The blood had drained from her face, and every object in the room stood out in sharp relief. “When will the others be home?”

“Not for another hour at least,” said Emily. “Mrs.—Mrs. Baldwin said she and her husband were going to have a good dinner, and Mrs. Hennings is—”

“Good.”

“What’s happened? Do you need to lie down? Are you sick?”

“No. There’s about to be trouble.” Mina met Emily’s eyes. She put every bit of force she’d ever learned into her voice, every atom of command she’d mastered dealing with younger siblings and cheeky grocers and Professor Carter’s visitors. “Go to the pantry. Get into the corner.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain. Please.”

Mina leaned forward, taking the other girl’s shoulders in her hands. “Please trust me on this. If nothing happens, you can make fun of me later or be angry, but please go now.”

Now Emily’s face was white and her hands shook, but she nodded. “And you?”