Bear, Elizabeth - Wax by Bear Elizabeth

Author:Bear, Elizabeth [Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-10-30T15:43:09+00:00

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Garrett seldom entertained at home, and when she did, they were usually the sort of guests one received in the den, or the library. Her laboratory was on the first floor of her townhouse, immediately behind the parlor, where one might have anticipated a dining room. The room itself was half study and half chemistry, with books and chairs lining the walls and long stone-topped benches running parallel. Cleanly clothed, now, and gowned in a white canvas smock to protect her dress, Garrett moved crisply between her granite-topped workbench and the thaumaturgic circle inlaid in red and white stone tiles amid the slate-blue field of the floor. She laid out the samples she’d isolated from the body of the murdered boy: earth, fingernail clippings, scraps of his clothing and scrapings from the steps on which he had died. She piled each sample in a shallow watch glass placed in one of the isolation circles. Those smaller peripheral circles also held beakers of clotted blood and an Erlen flask of rainwater, along with samples of hair that she had retrieved from the toiletries of the missing individuals—a bit of everything she meant to eliminate from the parameters of her spell. At the very center of the circle, over the gas flame, a crucible warmed. A low table set beside it held a small heap of candles brought from the victims’ house and several more watch glasses.

Three of these shallow dishes each contained a bit of the waxlike substance.

The last one cradled splinters from the gouges in the blue wooden door.

By seven o’clock, Garrett was on her second pot of tea. Mike had come in to find her after his supper and was dozing in his basket. Straightening from her bench, she had just thought of pausing for her own meal before the evening’s real work when a familiar tap on the door brought her head around. Mike pricked up his ears and hopped to his feet as she opened the door.

“Supper already, Mary?” Garrett asked the dark, narrow-shouldered housekeeper standing in the hallway.

Mary’s eyes twinkled. “If it please you, m’Lady, there’s a right handsome gentleman caller to see you. I’ve invited him in.” Mary extended an ornate silver tray so that Garrett could pick up the visiting card lying on it.

“Ah. Indeed?” She didn’t think she needed to glance at the name—the slightly oily feel of parchment between her fingertips told her everything. “Engraved. Very nice. Send Don Sebastien in, please. I will receive him in the laboratory.” Mike wagged his coiled plume happily after Mary; she ducked her head and left.

Mary must have taken the gentleman detective’s overcoat and hat, but Garrett noticed that the shoulders of his coat were damp through. “Is it raining again, Don Sebastien?” Absently, her hand came up to press the place between her breasts where a sigil tattooed in crimson marked her training. She felt as if his gaze burrowed through cloth to notice it.

“Indeed,” he said, bowing over her hand, making no comment on her stained smock.

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