Spellmaker

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Elsie Camden sat on the edge of her bed, reading over something she most certainly was not supposed to have. Folded lines crossed it, one down and three across, the creases growing thin from how often she had opened and closed the page. The scrawl was red—the color of rational aspectors—and in the handwriting of whoever had died to create it. She might never know his or her name, and perhaps it was best not to know. By all means, she was translating a piece of the spellmaker’s corpse.

The Latin-to-English dictionary she’d borrowed from the vicar was worn and well used. Peeling along the spine. Elsie had confirmed her suspicions several lines ago, but felt the urge to be thorough. To study the spell all the way to its end.

It was a master spell, without a doubt. A master spell of forgetfulness, of memory stealing. Long term. Exactly how long, Elsie wasn’t certain, even as she went over the last words on the opus page, but one of the words translated to years. Years were tricky—the spell might not be as useful as Elsie had previously hoped, especially since Ogden seemed to have, more or less, recovered from his ordeal at the dock and her discovery of his secrets. He’d been under the spiritual control of another aspector for a decade, forced to help perpetrate crimes he would never condone. Elsie had been used, too, but their adversary had twisted her mind instead, tricking her into thinking she was using her spellbreaking ability for a good cause, when in fact she’d been furthering a perverse agenda. At least neither of them had been made to kill directly. Still, the knowledge that they had, however unwittingly, helped in the demise of so many weighed on them both.

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