Instead of trying to remember, he answered as a matter of protocol. “My only lead was the missing man’s place of employment. The Wilshire Music Hall on Concord Street in the East End. That’s where I’d start. But how does that help me find my lodging place?”
He couldn’t say he was sorry he’d asked, though he wasn’t quite prepared for her abrupt determination to assist. After offering up that charming smile of hers, she took off walking at a brisk pace, returned the coffee mug to its grateful monger, then demanded he follow to the nearest headhouse to purchase a third-class ticket for the underground railway. He wasn’t sure he’d have used the newfangled system when he’d arrived in the city from the north on the train. The idea of zooming in the dark beneath the decaying earth, with only an oil lamp to light the train’s way—and where at least a small population of the dead were known to lie dormant in disturbed plague pits—raised his discomfort level to somewhere north of teeth grinding. She seemed to surmise his reluctance yet dropped the necessary coins at the ticket window for their journey.
“Are you sure about this?” Ian said as she collected the tickets.
Edwina cocked her head in the direction of the stairs leading down to the platform. “Call it witch’s intuition,” she whispered. “Besides, this is the quickest way.” He half suspected she’d used that voice of hers to bewitch him into following along without his noticing. How else could he explain why he did as she asked?
The train tunnel went even deeper in the earth than he’d imagined. The stairs descended to a depth of a hundred feet or more by the time they reached the underground platform. The colorful posters on the opposite wall advertising milk and flour, with their rosy-cheeked cherubs, did little to ease his discomfort. Not so long as the gaping black hole of a tunnel yawned at him from either side of where he stood. It was one thing to explore a cave or burrow. Those spaces were condoned by nature and were only occasionally occupied by spirits that meant no harm. But this deliberate digging through the earth, disturbing eons-buried ground to build tunnels for human transportation, was asking for trouble.
As though mocking his concern, the arriving train rumbled to life inside the tunnel, sending a small tremor to shake the ground beneath his feet. The infernal beast hissed and sparked as it rolled forward, finally emerging in a cloud of black smoke like some medieval dragon brought to heel.
The train rattled to a stop in front of the platform. Edwina led him to a hard wooden seat in a third-class car at the back before the carriage chugged off through the dark. His hand itched to remove his pocket watch as shadows flickered in the dark outside the window. As nonchalantly as he could, he opened the timepiece and flicked the lever on the side, pretending to consult the hour as he leaned toward the window. His seatmate wasn’t fooled.
“It’s some sort of astrolabe, is it not?”
Ian checked the carriage to see who might be listening, but there were only three workingmen seated in the rows ahead of them, each with his nose buried in his newspaper—legs spread, heads down, postures relaxed. Behind them a young woman in a plaid shawl sat embroidering a filthy handkerchief, squinting at her stitches in the smoky carriage light. She wore fingerless gloves yet no hat atop her simple bun. None of their fellow travelers seemed to have taken any notice of anyone else but themselves.
“It does have that ability, aye.” He tipped the watch so she could see the flywheel whirring around almost as if it floated above the face of the clock. “But the wheel is measuring the static electricity in the air.”
“Whatever for?”
“The presence of manifestations.”
Her eyes rose from the watch to meet his. “You mean ghosts?”
“Aye, it can sense those, but it’s mostly attuned to pick up vibrations of auras like ours, and sometimes even the residual energy of a spell if the magic was strong enough.”
He demonstrated the different settings on the instrument and how they measured for the presence of supernatural beings within fifty paces, including themselves. The arrows on the face of the watch both pointed toward Edwina with alarming insistence, as her aural spectrum overshadowed Ian’s. He gave the instrument a shake to see if it would reset. When it didn’t, he closed the watch up, stowed the instrument back in his pocket, and uttered a slight “humph.”
“I did recently cast a spell,” she said, adjusting her shawl as she tried to reassure him. The train shuddered to a stop at the next station, and two of the men departed the coach. “Do the officers of the Witches’ Constabulary carry such gadgets?” she asked when the car rolled forward again.