Jade nodded grimly. “The official report says fatal reaction to medication. But Alasdair wasn’t lucid yet; he didn’t have access to medications other than what the doctors gave him, and they hadn’t given him anything new.”
“So you think—what?” Wesley said. “Poison?”
“It’s unfortunately possible,” Zhang said. “I went over the whole hospital from the astral plane. Plenty of security keeping patients in, very little keeping others out. Someone posing as a nurse or an orderly could have slipped into Alasdair’s room under the guise of delivering food or medicine.”
Sebastian’s stomach turned over. “That’s awful.”
“I know.” Jade rubbed her face. “We weren’t the only ones to have the thought, either. The police were there.”
Alasdair had helped to kidnap all of them; had murdered his own friend, the baronet Sir Ellery, in cold blood and been ready to murder many others in order to destroy magic. Sebastian hadn’t forgotten any of that, but his heart was heavy nonetheless.
Wesley steepled his fingers. “We do have to ask the next question, then,” he said. “If Mr. Findlay was, in fact, murdered, who killed him—and why?”
“But we have a good lead on the why, don’t we?” Arthur said. “Someone wants to see magic destroyed—someone who knows enough about paranormal lore and history to know about the relics and think to try combining them. And I agree that Alasdair was unlikely to have been the true mastermind behind those plans,but perhaps he knew too much about the plot to be allowed to wake.”
Zhang had pulled a small notebook out of his jacket. He set it now on the table. “Jade and I have been piecing together what we know.” He pointed to the names on the paper. “Alasdair Findlay, a paranormal who could hear magic and was driven mad by it. Major Charles Langford, who was Lord Fine’s commanding officer in the British Army. And Sir Ellery, a baronet whose cousin had stolen the pomander relic from the Earl of Blanshard. We know Sir Ellery was the one to spring Alasdair from the Hyde Garden asylum in September, because Ellery wanted Alasdair’s help to claim the pomander relic for his own. But he had to have learned about the pomander, and Alasdair’s existence, from someone else.”
“Could it have been from the earl himself?” Arthur suggested.
“Possibly, but I don’t think so,” Jade said. “The pomander relic came to New York with your valet, Lord Fine, and you mentioned Major Langford knew your valet was involved in collecting and selling rare artifacts. Langford claimed the War Office was investigating Sir Ellery, but we know now they were working together. It very well could have been Langford who told Ellery about the pomander, not realizing Ellery’s greed to claim the pomander would overtake any desire to stop magic.”
“That does seem possible,” Wesley said. “Though Langford did work for the War Office, that part is true.”
“Which begs the question,” said Arthur, “of who could have convinced a man like Langford to turn hisattention from War Office business to the business of destroying magic?”
Wesley frowned.
Sebastian nudged him. “What?”
“Possibly nothing,” Wesley said. “Only—I knew Ellery and Langford both, and there’s at least one other man in those circles whose life has been touched by all this, whether he knows it or not. A marquess by the name of Thornton.”
“Lord Thornton?” Now Sebastian was frowning. “I know that name—I knew his maid Olive. She lived in Kilburn—or she did, until the Earl of Blanshard drained her aura.”
“Thornton lives near me in Kensington,” Wesley said. “Utter arse, but that doesn’t mean he knows about magic. Still, ghastly business, what happened to his maid. And if Langford had been shown what magic did to his friend Thornton’s maid, he would have been convinced that magic needed to be stopped by any means.”
Rory had been listening without speaking, playing with the slim gold band on his right hand. It was a non-magical ring, not the ring relic that controlled the wind, but it still reminded Sebastian of how much magic Rory controlled—that Rory himself had once been locked in the Hyde Garden asylum, lost to his overpowering ability to see history.
“Rory, what do you think?” Sebastian asked.
Rory pursed his lips. “I’m thinking about what Ace said—that whoever is behind this knows enough about paranormal lore and history to know about the relics and think to try combining them. I never met anyone who knows that much about relics besidesyou, Seb.”
“Oh come now,” Wesley said, a little more sharply. “We’re not looking for a de Leon.”
“It’s a fair point, Wes,” Sebastian said ruefully. “One of my ancestors was a literal witch-hunter for the Spanish Inquisition, the one who hunted down all seven relics in the first place. He probably would have loved to destroy magic.”
“But it was the Earl of Blanshard who stole the relics from your family,” Arthur added. “And now Rory has the ring, Jade the brooch, and Gwen the amulet. Ellis transferred the dagger’s magic into a ring, which is in the Zhangs’ library, and Sebastian destroyed the pomander.” He was counting them off on his fingers. “That’s five of the seven. What are the final two?”
Sebastian wasn’t supposed to talk about the relics to anyone outside of his family. But everyone at the table had helped find missing relics, along with the siphon that had made them. He trusted all of them. “There’s a medallion that was worn as a pendant,” Sebastian said, “and a cuff, for the arm. They were not among the Earl of Blanshard’s collection when we were in his manor in September.”
Zhang was leaning in now, curiosity on his face. “What do those two relics do?”
“The medallion has tracking magic,” Sebastian said. “Orhuntingmagic, if you’d rather call it that,” he added, side-eying Wesley.
“What, like a magical hound?” Wesley said.
“That’s pretty accurate,” Sebastian admitted. “The magic is supposed to work in a similar way: as long as you have a sample of what you’re looking for—ascent—it can find more of the same.”
“Could this relic huntmagic?” Rory asked, more quietly.
