Star Cursed

I look at her—really look. Elena’s got the most marvelous game face of anyone I’ve ever met. But her long, elegant fingers are twisting together as she fiddles with the pink lace at her wrist. Her black curls are disheveled from the wind moaning outside the windows, and she hasn’t bothered to put on earbobs or line her fingers with rings. By her own high standards, she looks half a mess.

“At any rate,” she says, looking back at me just as curiously, “I doubt you’re here to discuss my relationship with your sister.”

“No.” I jiggle my leg nervously and then cross my ankles. I loathe this. “I need your help.”

Elena smiles. “Why the change of heart?”

I force myself not to take the words back. This is no time to be petty. I need someone who understands the workings of the Sisterhood better than I do, and Gretchen is too preoccupied. “Cora says I can trust you.”

I explain Inez’s plan to attend the Head Council meeting and destroy their minds. Elena listens, her full lips pursed, then says, “I don’t see how we can put a stop to it, either. And the repercussions are sure to be dreadful.”

“It’s hard to know what the Brothers might do in response, but I’m hoping we can mitigate a little of the damage,” I suggest, tapping my fingers against the yellow arm of the settee. “The first place the Brothers will strike back is at Harwood. But if we can break all the girls out of Harwood the same night as the Head Council meeting, and bring some of the ones who are witches back to the convent, we’ll save them and increase our numbers. There’s just one problem. I know how to get in, but not how to get them all out.”

Elena tosses her hair, some of her insouciance returning. “The biggest problem is that the girls are drugged, isn’t it? They can’t help themselves once you free them or access their own magic.”

“Exactly.”

“Paul McLeod is working at Harwood, isn’t he, on the new construction?” she asks, and I nod. “Maura’s been flirting with him to provoke you—and me, I expect, which has worked rather nicely. But she’s also been plying him with questions. I daresay you could use the same tactic.”

I make a face. “You want me to flirt with Paul to gather information?”

“I wouldn’t be so crass—not when we both know your heart lies elsewhere.” Elena smirks, and I glare at her. “But if you were to call at his office—I daresay they aren’t working out on the site in this weather. And they would have floor plans for Harwood there. Who knows what you could find that might be helpful?”

“Won’t Paul suspect me, once he hears about a mutiny at the asylum?” Elena stares at me, as though the answer to that is obvious, and I shift uncomfortably on the settee. “No. He’s my oldest friend, I couldn’t—”

“You could,” Elena interrupts, smoothing her pink skirts. “If it’s to save hundreds of girls’ lives, you could. You will.”

She’s right.

“When is your next nursing trip to Harwood?” she asks.

I gulp. “Tomorrow afternoon. We usually go on Saturdays, but I wanted to attend Sachi’s trial, and Sophia said she’d go with me.”

“Then you ought to pay a call on Mr. McLeod tomorrow morning. And we’ll need to figure out which of the girls in Harwood are actually witches. There must be records somewhere. The ones with mind-magic ought to be our priority, I think, in terms of who to bring back to the convent; they’ll be the most use to us as things get more dangerous.” Elena frowns, tapping one smooth nail against her lips.

“Finn says there are all kinds of records in the National Archives. He’s going to see what he can find,” I say cautiously, waiting for Elena to make some jest about him being a gardener again.

“I can’t come with you tomorrow—I’ve got hardly any healing magic to speak of; it would raise suspicion—but I’ll come on the mission itself,” she says. I can practically see the wheels of her mind turning. “In the meantime, I’ll start talking to some of the other governesses and teachers. Most of them are in Inez’s pockets, but there are some I think will want to help us. I don’t think we ought to give them too many details—well, we haven’t got too many details yet, but the more people who know, the more likely it is to get out and get fouled up. I don’t think Inez will bother trying to stop you—it will serve her well enough to have more witches—but she’s hard to predict.”

“Thank you.” I peer at her curiously. “When Maura finds out that you helped me, she’s going to be furious.”

“I know.” It’s strange, after all her subterfuge, to hear Elena be so straightforward. “If there was anyone else who could help you, I’d let them. I would have refused Cora, dying or no. But there isn’t anyone else, and she pointed out—rightly, I think—that if Inez gets power, she’ll use Maura and then discard her.”

“Maura trusts her. She says Inez believes in her.” My voice is bitter.

“I’m afraid for her,” Elena confesses, her brown eyes meeting mine.

I take a deep breath. “I’m afraid of her.”

Chapter 16

“CATE?” PAUL STRIDES OUT OF HIS OFFICE, looking utterly flabbergasted to find me waiting in the small, elegant front room at Jones & Sons.

“Hello.” I offer up a shy smile. “Do you have time for a chat?”

His green eyes light up, and I hate myself a little.

This is for the Sisterhood, I remind myself. For the innocent girls imprisoned in Harwood.

“I always have time for you,” he says, ushering me down the carpeted hall and into a small room dominated by a shining mahogany desk piled high with architectural designs curling up at the edges. He hangs my cloak on a cast-iron coatrack in the corner, then folds himself behind the desk in a tall brown leather chair. I sit in the other, luxuriating in the buttery feel of the armrests beneath my palms. The smell reminds me of the barn at home, of playing hide-and-seek with Paul when we were children. It puts me at ease.

“Is something wrong?” he asks. He looks terribly professional in his gray jacket and vest, with a green cravat wrapped around his throat. I daresay he knows it matches his eyes. Paul has never been immune to his own charms.

“No. Well—yes. I owe you an apology,” I say quietly.

“Yes.” He leans back in his chair and gazes at me, waiting. He has the body of a sportsman—tall, with broad shoulders and a square jaw—but the fine, detailed sketches on his desktop remind me that there’s more to him than that. He’s a man with ambition, who’s secured a good place for himself in a booming profession in a booming city; a man who appreciates the fine things in life, as his new phaeton and handsome clothes suggest.

Paul will make someone a fine husband. Someone who can love him as he deserves.

“I don’t regret my decision,” I say. I want to be clear about that. “But it all happened very suddenly, and I’m sorry that I didn’t have an opportunity to tell you—to give you an answer first. Your friendship—it means a great deal to me, and you deserved better.”

My eyes falter, and then I see it—on the wall beside the door hang several framed diagrams of a large building. Are they copies of the plans for Harwood? It would make sense to display his first real project of importance.