“Shall I send the children to the parlor or the library?” he drawled, looking about the cramped single room. Noting my lack of amusement, he clapped his hands and said, “Take what totems you’ve finished and go out onto the street. Go, hawk the wares.” They gathered their pieces and trundled outside. Once they’d gone, Hargrove beckoned me to join him. “How may I serve you? A tarot read? A fortune told? Would you like me to fix your overlarge front teeth?”
He said nothing about the apple. I thought of three different ways to start the conversation. None of them came out of my mouth.
“Well?” Hargrove said.
“I…I’m here to see if there’s anything I can do for the children,” I said lamely. My lie was part cowardice, part hope. Perhaps there was a logical explanation for the apple. Perhaps my vision of him really had been a dream, like my dream of Rook. Nightmares brought on by too much stress.
He leaned back in his chair. “More charity?”
“Yes.” I fiddled with the strings of my reticule.
“You’re the sorcerers’ long-awaited prophesied one, aren’t you? I should think vanquishing the Ancients will be a great help to my children.”
I started. “How did you know?”
“Please don’t insult my intelligence,” he snapped. “I’m aware of the sorcerers’ absurd antics. Why they should get a nice, juicy prophecy is simply beyond me. Sorcerers are stunted, timid children without the stomach to go beyond the boundaries of the possible.” He laid his hand on the table, then took it away, revealing the card of the woman holding a wand, her hair flying behind her in a great breeze. The card read, The Queen of Wands. “You want to help my children? Let me tell your fortune. Tuppence a pop.”
“All right.” I sat down heavily in relief. He wasn’t going to talk about the dream.
He snapped his fingers and produced two more cards out of thin air. The first one showed a happy boy with one foot hanging off a cliff, a little dog at his heels.
“The Fool, my dear, signifies the beginning of an adventure or journey of some kind. The Fool is you.” He smiled at this veiled insult. “After that, we have the Queen of Wands. You might think this obvious, you being a lady sorcerer and all. But really, the Queen signifies reaching a new stage in your development, able to understand your past and look to your future.”
“That’s nice.” My voice sounded dull.
“Yes, roses and hugs and puppies. But look,” he said, and threw down the third card to reveal that grim, capering skeleton dancing down the road, its skull mouth open in a great cackle. “Death. Don’t misunderstand,” he said when I flinched. “The Death card means a great change approaches. Your life will forever alter.” He pulled at his graying beard and winked one dark eye. “Her Majesty will commend you, and you’ll be the most revered and beautiful sorcerer ever to have all her dreams come true, huzzah, hurrah, biscuits and cocoa.” He produced another card from his great purple sleeves and placed it atop the other three. The card showed a boy and a girl locked in an embrace. “Ah, the Lovers. An inner struggle between two things. And now, one more.” Down came the picture of the little man in the pointed hat making a toy soldier dance. “The Magician. It can signify taking control of your life. Or, in this case, it can be quite astoundingly literal.” The cards vanished into the folds of his sleeves.
“Is that it?” I asked, wary.
He shrugged. “Those are the cards that spoke to me. Is there something else you wanted?”
I couldn’t do it. Perhaps it was cowardly, but if he wasn’t going to bring it up, then I wasn’t going to tempt fate. I’d write the whole dream off as a peculiar occurrence and leave it at that.
“Thank you for my fortune,” I said, opening my reticule and placing the pennies on the tabletop.
“Your hands are trembling,” he observed.
“Last night was quite an ordeal,” I muttered.
Hargrove flipped the pennies into the air, and they disappeared. “Yes. Korozoth makes for a rather destructive guest. But they’re saying you sent him away, with those unique fire abilities.” He pulled at his beard. “Such a talent. Where did you come by it? I wonder.”
“Goodbye,” I said, turning for the door.
I was almost out when he said, “Thank you for your interest in the lives of little people, Miss Henrietta Howel.”
Part of me screamed to leave, but it was too late for that. I released the doorknob. Slowly, I turned back to him. “How did you know my name?”
“Oh, Lord Blackwood said it when you were last here, didn’t he?” he asked in mock innocence.
“No. He never used it.” That sick, knotted feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. There was no avoiding it. “And I didn’t tell it to you in my room last night. In the fog.”
Hargrove hummed. “I wondered when we’d come to that topic of conversation.”
The room seemed to spin about me. “How were you able to do it? How could I have caught that apple core while in a dream?”
“My dear, you may not like the answers to those questions.”
“I knew you recognized me the first time I met you on the street. You tried to hide it, but I saw.” I came toward him, my heart hammering.
“Oh, my little blossom, we’re at the start of such a slippery journey.” He picked up the foul-smelling gin and took a swig. “I didn’t want to do this,” he said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, “but I owe him that much.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yes, I recognized you, but not from a previous encounter. No, it was who you looked like—that was the killer.” He took another swig, wincing as it burned on the way down.
“Who do I look like?”
“Your father, obviously.”
I sat down heavily in a chair. How on earth could this dirty London magician have known my father? “That’s a lie.”
“William Howel. A Welsh solicitor living in Devon with his lovely young wife, Helena, née Murray, and his widowed sister—let me think, what was her name? Anne, Amelia, Agnes. Yes, Agnes. He looked just like you, dark complexion, dark eyes and hair. Drowned. What was the story, in a boating accident? Almost seventeen years ago. What a tragedy.” He looked at me with cold, laughing eyes. “Have I hit the mark?”
My hands felt numb. “How could you have known him?”
“Your father was a magician, Henrietta Howel. As are you.”
I was on my feet before I could think. Gripping the edge of the table for balance, I said, “He couldn’t have been. He practiced the law, not magic.”
“The magical arts don’t pay much, as you see,” he said, gesturing to his squalid living conditions, “but they’re a fine place for a talented dabbler. Your father was exactly that; your aunt Agnes as well. You’re shocked. Didn’t know women could be magicians? It’s rare, but the potential is there. It all boils down to blood. And you should never try boiling blood, incidentally, for it’s a disgusting mess.” He offered me the bottle of gin. I refused, though I craved a drink. “It’s even rarer that a girl from a sorcerer family inherits her father’s ability. You’ve no sorcerer parent, so how would you explain your newfound status? A prophecy?” He blew a loud, wet, and rude noise. “You’re a magician living a most magnificent lie. Which is why,” he said, leaning in closer, “I feel a stupid urge to help you.”
I was a magician. A low, dirty, common magician. Not a sorcerer. Not the prophecy. The thoughts appeared and disappeared in my mind like ripples of water. I couldn’t hold on to them.
“How did you know my father?” I could hear my voice rising.
“We met when he came to London to see about joining our Guild. Magicians are disorganized creatures, but for a time we did discuss having another go at a Guild, much like the sorcerers’ Order. Never worked, though. Most people didn’t remember to show up for meetings. Or they’d turned themselves into a teacup and couldn’t make it. That was when the illustrious magician Howard Mickelmas presided.” He sloshed the gin bottle back and forth, lost in thought. “I must say, it was nice meeting you upon the astral plane. I haven’t conversed with a fellow magician in that way since before the ban on apprenticeships.”