“I tried to find you,” Hob said. “But all I could see of you was fog.”
“Sorry, I had to lock you out. You would have been roasted on a bonfire if I hadn’t.”
Hob leaned in to sniff Ian’s clothes. “Smoke and blood,” he said and wrinkled his nose.
“We got him,” Ian explained. “The Brick Lane Slasher. That’s who Mary led us to.”
“Yes, yes, we heard all about that,” Elvanfoot said, rummaging in the bottom of an umbrella stand.
Thinking he’d brought shocking news, Ian was surprised to find them uninterested in the information. “Wait, you canna have heard already. I only just returned from the station house.”
Hob informed him otherwise. “The police were here! Searched the place top to bottom.”
“Witch or mortal?” Ian asked. He supposed Singh could have sent a team while he was giving his statement.
“Both,” Sir Elvanfoot said as he retrieved one of Mary’s orbs out of the umbrella stand and set it on the table. “They came to gather evidence.” Then he added softly, “It wasn’t my George.”
So the old man had had his suspicions too.
“Nae,” Ian said and tried to understand the pain it must cause to feel relief at such news, only to still anguish over the missing son’s whereabouts. “It was a local hooligan Mary had befriended. Claimed he only killed the poor sods to satisfy her”—he pointed to the bauble in Elvanfoot’s hand—“peculiar obsession.”
Elvanfoot nodded, taking in his meaning. “Only it’s more than an obsession,” he clarified. “With Mary, I suspect her odd quirk of nature is as natural as eating, drinking, or sleeping for you or I.”
“There’s nothing natural about it,” he said.
Elvanfoot begged to differ, but he had more pressing matters to get to. “The police left a few minutes before you arrived. They confiscated everything belonging to Mary. They took the items hidden in the trunk. Her grimoire, and the baubles she’d collected.” He held up a finger. “All but this one, that is.”
“Sir had to keep it safe, so I hid it in the umbrella stand,” Hob said.
For a heartbeat Ian held out hope the memory was his, but he knew Mary had taken that one with her. So who did this one belong to? And why hide it from the police?
“We were fortunate to have finished our little experiment moments before they arrived, were we not, Hob? Or we would have been found out.”
Hob grinned so wide the corners of his mouth forced his pointed ears to poke up through his scruff of hair. “Show Mister,” he said. “Come see, come see, come see!”
Ian watched as Sir Elvanfoot placed the blue orb in his palm.
“It occurred to me that there was little use in taking a person’s memory only to shrink it down to stone. There’s little fascination in holding the orbs. Light doesn’t pass through. And they aren’t of true gemstone quality. However,” the witch said, holding his hand open, “if one could condense a memory, perhaps one could also expand it.”
Sir Elvanfoot had Hob sprinkle water over the orb. The hard shell cracked and swelled, transforming into a shimmering blue light that reflected shadows of people and places.
“Mary did that very thing. I could see images of my thoughts floating inside the orb she’d stolen from me.” A strange sort of melancholia ruffled through Ian at the sight of another’s memories, knowing he would never really know the extent of what he’d lost inside that orb.
“Simple expansion spell.” Elvanfoot shrugged. “Same one I use for turning prunes into plums.”
“Sir tested them all before we found this one.” Hob’s eyes reflected the blue light. “Such strange and wondrous visions they all held.”
Elvanfoot raised his hand and they watched the shadows swirl inside the orb. A woman in a green dress laughing. A carriage ride over the River Clayborn. Ian recognized the columns of the philosopher’s monument above his city and then the image of a viaduct as a train rattled over, blowing its whistle. “Whose memory is this?” he asked as Sir Elvanfoot’s face appeared in the orb’s shadows. The wizard was reading a grimoire beside an enormous fireplace. His hair was not yet white. He offered a toffee to the owner of the memory.
“It belongs to my son.” Elvanfoot let the orb shrink again. The blue light collapsed.
“It’s George’s? But then—”
Before he could finish his thought, a noise like a window sash crashing against the sill rattled upstairs. Ian held up his hand to caution Elvanfoot and Hob to stay put while he checked the stairway. If it was Mary, he would strike first and ask questions later. Instead, he found Edwina at the top of the stairs, soaked to the skin and shivering as her shawl hung limp over her shoulders.