“Something hidden in the office,” Edwin said instead, looking at the chaos around them.
“I’d assumed they’d have tossed the office first thing, if they knew it was here,” said Blyth. “But no, they had to wait until I arrived.”
“There are ways to look for magical items without resorting to this kind of petulance,” said Edwin, bending to pick up the most egregiously wronged book within arm’s reach. He smoothed the bent pages and set it on the desk.
“That’s what confused me,” said Miss Morrissey. “They could have searched the office five times for something that holds power, and we’d have never known.”
“No, he said a contract.” Blyth cast a meaningful glance around the mounds of paper. “I do remember that, because you’d been going on about how all of magic is—oh, blast. Is it not a piece of paper then?”
“If he meant a spell, he’d have said a spell,” said Edwin, but he wasn’t sure. He thought longingly of the sixteenth-century French magician who’d claimed to have found a method for reliving a person’s memories alongside them. Having to rely on the firsthand account of an unmagical amateur who’d only stumbled into his unbusheling the previous day was galling.
“I haven’t found anything with the slightest whiff of a legal flavour to it. Before you stormed in I was opening his letters. Not that it’s helped much.” Blyth sifted through a slim pile of unopened envelopes. “And these ones don’t look awfully promising either. Three within the fortnight from someone who signs himself the Grimm of Gloucester—”
“Crackpot of the first order,” said Miss Morrissey, and Edwin nodded in agreement. The Grimm had been writing his lurid, unreadably rambling letters to this office for decades now.
“And here’s one from a Mrs. Flora Sutton, in an envelope that—ugh—smells like it’s been doused in attar of roses. Was the chap having an affair with a dashing widow, do we think? Or perhaps . . . not even a widow?”
“She’d hardly have written to him at the office, if so,” Edwin snapped. “Don’t be foolish.”
Blyth raised his eyebrows. “Calm down, old man. Only joking.”
Only joking. The words reminded Edwin unpleasantly of the fellows who tended to be friends with his brother Walt: bullishly immune to sarcasm, and smirkingly aware of their power. Most of their jokes weren’t the slightest bit funny.
Showing any kind of reaction just provided more ammunition. Edwin knew that. Still, he found himself glaring.
“You’ve been cursed, and you think this is a time to make jokes?”
Blyth shoved his sleeve down again. “I’ve been cursed, so I’ll make all the jokes I please.”
Edwin thought again, with a startling pinprick of guilt, of the small bottle of lethe-mint in his pocket. Like laudanum dropped into my drink. Blyth had come uncomfortably close there.
But dammit, Edwin couldn’t let Blyth go stumbling back to his life under the power of an unidentified curse. Knowing or unknowing. Edwin didn’t believe in that kind of cruelty. No matter what kind of person he was, Blyth deserved to be disentangled fully.
Which meant that Edwin wasn’t going to go charging off to the Minister to demand a new Home Office counterpart. He was stuck with this one, at least until he could learn enough about that curse to remove it.
“As I said, I’ll need to do some research. And”—damn, damn, no avoiding it—“there’s someone who should take a look at that curse. His family’s always had a knack for working in runes.” If he even let them in the front door.
“Very well, if you think it’s worth a try,” said Blyth. “We’ll be here. Sorting. You can go and fetch this someone.”
“Fetch,” Edwin said. “Of course. Is there anything else I can bring back for you, Sir Robert?”
That appeared to sail over Blyth’s head. “Though really, I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m looking for here. Why don’t you stay and help? It’ll go faster with three.”
There was no magic at all in Blyth’s voice, in the note of casual command that rang golden in his vowels, but something about it tried to capture Edwin’s feet anyway. Edwin swallowed a hot mouthful of resentment and fumbled for his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. He could invent a pressing engagement and insist that they meet up later; Blyth wouldn’t question it.
Miss Morrissey’s contemptuous look, from her position on the floor, dared him to try. Besides, the likelihood of Hawthorn allowing himself to be fetched anywhere was about par with the likelihood that Edwin would spontaneously gain the ability to freeze a lake’s surface with a wave of his hands. A feat that he had, in fact, seen Hawthorn accomplish when they were boys.