“She sounds like you,” said Mina, reaching out to take the bowl from her mother as she went downstairs.

“Funny,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I was going to say she sounded like your Aunt Jane.”

It was good to laugh with family again, but the moment didn’t last long. It couldn’t.

“Professor Carter said she fainted this evening,” said Mina, as they reached the kitchen. Mrs. Seymour began to fill the kettle. Falling into old patterns, Mina emptied the bowl into the sink and started getting the tea things ready.

“She did. After supper. We thought it was nothing at first. A bit of a cold, maybe, or—well, I thought it might be female troubles, though she’s young for that. But we couldn’t wake her, and then the fever started.” Mrs. Seymour wiped at a nonexistent spot on the stove, keeping her face turned away.

Putting down the teacups, Mina hugged her mother from behind. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“What could you have done?” Mrs. Seymour asked sharply, but she patted Mina’s hand.

“Been here,” said Mina. “Has the doctor been?”

“Oh, yes. The lady doctor I wrote you about. She said to try and keep the fever down, and to give her tea and broth and similar when she wakes. She can’t say what it is, though,” Mrs. Seymour added.

“Just a fever, maybe. That happens,” said Mina, trying not to think of stories she’d read in the Times or heard at Professor Carter’s. Steamships came in every day from all around the world. Along with passengers and official cargo, might they bring diseases? Maybe even one that a London doctor hadn’t ever seen?

Maybe she should stop borrowing trouble.

Mina let go of her mother and went to get the canister of tea.

“She’ll be here again tomorrow,” said Mrs. Seymour. “I’m sure—she seems very bright.”

“And if she can’t do anything,” Mina said, glancing for the first time toward the hallway where she’d hung her coat, “we’ll find someone who can.”

Forty

“I’m not sure why you feel this need for urgency,” Colin said.

He lounged at the library desk, occupying the seat that Mina had taken for weeks. He sat far more casually than she ever had, though, with his feet crossed on the desk and the chair tilted back, not at all worried about damaging either the wood or his spine.

He’d never needed to worry about such things. The MacAlasdair wealth was more than sufficient to replace a chair or a desk, and the backbone of a dragon scion could stand up to a kick from a horse, let alone bad posture. Stephen had never even been conscious of either for most of his life.

Of course he thought of Mina. Everything in the damn house reminded him of her.

“The arm will be better in a few weeks,” Colin added in the face of Stephen’s silence, glancing derisively down at his sling. “It’s mending now. Ward’s hated you for a lifetime, and he’s been trying to kill you for months. What’s another fortnight or two?”

“I didn’t know what he was doing before,” said Stephen, pouring powder into the barrel of a derringer. Most of the time, he didn’t bother with guns. Baldwin had owned the only revolver in the house, and Mina had taken that with her to Ward’s office and then her home. This older gun, one of the relics of his father’s time in London, would at least give him two shots at Ward, assuming that it didn’t explode in his face. He would rather not change shape unless he had to, at least not until Ward was dead. “We killed one of his half men. I don’t want to give him time to make another one.”

“Maybe he already has,” said Colin. “You don’t send all your forces on a raid. Even I know that. Maybe he has a small army.”

“Then I still don’t want to give him time to make another one. He uses people for these creatures he makes, Colin.”

“Yes,” said Colin, “very bad form. Not worth getting killed over.”

“I’m not planning to be killed.”

Colin snorted. “Trust you to think people plan to get killed.”

Powder, charges, cap: Stephen double-checked the gun and put it down. “Colin,” he said, “he’s doing this because of me.”

“No, he’s—” The brothers locked eyes. Colin sighed. “Fine. I’ll not waste my breath. But I’m coming with you.”

“You’re hurt—”

“And still sturdier than Miss Seymour was last night. You’re not investigating now; you’re going into battle. I can cast spells one-handed, and a cast makes a fair bludgeon in extremis. I’m coming with you.”

Argument would be futile. Stephen knew that from Colin’s voice, even though his brother’s posture was as casual as ever. “Then there’s nothing more for me to say. At least Judith’s still at home, if things go very badly.”

“I thought you weren’t planning to get killed.”

“And I thought people don’t generally plan on that.”

Colin shook his head. “You’re a right nuisance when you’re melancholy, you know that?”

“I’m not melancholy.”

“You’d think a MacAlasdair would be a better liar. At least you’ve slept. You have slept, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Stephen. He had, in fact. A long life had taught him how to keep his emotions from getting in the way of his body’s most basic requirements. The night had been dark and peaceful. He’d only begun to worry when he woke up.

Undeterred, Colin eyed him. “She’s been gone a day, you great idiot. The wards can’t be causing all of this mood. Are you going to become one of those nauseating sorts who has to have his lady in sight at all times?”

“I will not, and she’s not my lady yet,” Stephen said, though speaking the words did lighten his mood a bit, foolishly enough. “And I wouldn’t be worried if this were an ordinary sort of absence or at a better time.”

“This is an ordinary sort of absence. Oh, it’s distressing now and all that”—Colin waved a hand—“but human children get ill. They’re known for it. They recover, generally, and Lord knows you gave her money enough to buy half the doctors in the East End if she feels it needful.”

“And if Mina gets ill?”

“Then you’ll put her in a bed upstairs and bring in half the doctors in London, I don’t doubt. I’ll even go after that bloke in Yorkshire with the familiar spirit if we need more than that, or we’ll bring her up to Brigid’s Well in Ireland. But things won’t come to any such pass. She’s a grown woman, and a healthy, strapping sort of girl at that.”

“Thank you for noticing,” said Stephen, only half sarcastic.

“I said I wasn’t in love with the girl, not that I didn’t look. She’ll be back. She’ll be fine. Now cheer up before I hit you with a bookend.”

* * *

“Well,” said Dr. Stevens, straightening up, “her condition hasn’t gotten any worse.”

“But no better?” Mrs. Seymour asked.

Dr. Stevens shook her head. The lady doctor of song and story, or at least of letter and mild dinner-table controversy, was surprisingly young, with only a touch of gray in her brown hair. She was gaunt, too—in Mina’s experience, half the educated people in the world forgot to eat if left to their own devices, and the other half ate too much—and her face was sharp, softened now by a look of confusion and regret.

“It’s actually rather remarkable,” she said, “how little she’s changed. I’d have expected—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. This isn’t the time or the place to wax academic.”

Mrs. Seymour didn’t care, Mina knew. She probably didn’t even hear most of what Dr. Stevens said because her attention was fixed on a single point. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

“A fever,” said the doctor, and spread her hands. “Some sort of influenza, perhaps. None of you have been feeling sick at all?”

“Not a one of us. Nor any of the neighbors.”

“Let’s hope you all stay as healthy, then.” Dr. Stevens frowned down at Florrie’s unconscious body. “All I can say is that you should keep going as you were. If you’d like to bring in another doctor, though, that’s quite reasonable. If she doesn’t regain consciousness by the time I come by this evening, I’ll send for one myself.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Seymour, and turned with set face and thin lips to her youngest daughter.

Watching, Mina blinked hard to keep tears firmly behind her eyelids. She looked away, toward Dr. Stevens’s retreating form. The doctor was glancing back over her shoulder, regarding the scene with puzzled worry.

Mina followed her out, stopping her on the landing. “Wax academic now,” she said, too weary and scared for preambles. “I’d like to know.”

“Oh?” Dr. Stevens peered up at her, surprised, but then shrugged. “It’s simply odd. With most disease, there’s some change from day to day, even if it’s not significant. Patients get better or worse by tiny degrees. Sometimes they get a little better and then worse again, or vice versa. And I suppose that could have happened while I was gone, but—”

“But?”

“But your sister’s condition, as far as I can tell, is exactly the same as it was yesterday. It’s not the oddest incident in the medical books, but it does rather stand out. And she hasn’t woken up at all, which isn’t common with fevers. I’d have expected at least one of you to be sick as well. It’s all very strange.”

“Oh,” said Mina. “I see. Thank you.”

She watched the doctor leave. She stood very still; there was earthquake enough in her mind without adding physical motion to it.

Nobody else was at all ill. Dr. Stevens didn’t know what was wrong. Except for the fever, Florrie was asleep, sleeping like a princess who’d pricked her finger or bitten into a poisoned apple. Sleeping like the target of a wicked fairy’s vengeance.