The room was large and elegant, the gaslights softened to cast a gentle glow on the glittering company. The table decorations were tastefully simple arrangements of spring blossoms set into chalices of silver. Footmen glided to and fro, all efficiency in their white gloves and stony faces. Evelina found her place card, done in Lady Bancroft’s elegant hand.

With a twist of anxiety, she discovered it was next to her escort’s. She swallowed hard, barely resisting the urge to tear up the offending scrap of paper. Dr. Magnus wanted a conversation with her, and she guessed he left nothing to chance. In some men it would be endearing, but after the bird in the bakery box, it was creepy.

“Are you going to sit, Miss Cooper?” he asked in a faintly mocking tone.

She didn’t like to be toyed with. Evelina’s vision blackened around the edges, anger and the tight lacing of her stays strangling her. She took a step back from the table.

Magnus raised an eyebrow. The room was filling with guests, the light shimmering on jewels and silks. A babble filled Evelina’s ears like a spring stream, making it hard to think. If she caused a scene, she would never find the nerve to return. Courage. He’s just another bully to be faced down. Evelina swallowed down her discomfort and settled into her chair.

The evening did not immediately improve. The first course was a chilled green soup the color of pond scum. There was no way it would pass her lips, so she had to look busy or get dragged into a chat with the doctor. She tried talking to the man on her left, but he was a banker who had no idea what to say to young ladies.

Bored, she looked around the table. Lord Bancroft had the flush of a man who had been drinking steadily. To his right was the Gold King. Despite their smiles, the air between them sparked with tension. If there had been any other option, Bancroft would clearly have tossed his guest into the street.

Both men were older, proud, and perfectly dressed, but there the resemblance ended. Where Keating was hard and clean-edged as steel, Bancroft was old stone, porous, and crumbling, his features blurring as time and drink had their way. Mind you, there was nothing indistinct about his bad temper that night. Lord B was watching Magnus with a look akin to hatred.

Keating’s perusal of Tobias reminded her of a scientist scrutinizing a new form of algae. Tobias appeared to be doing his best to entertain Keating’s red-haired daughter, but she could tell it was just good manners. He was restless and trying to hide it, while poor Alice was making every effort to charm him. Evelina felt a pang of dislike that had nothing to do with Alice herself and everything to do with her proximity to Tobias.

Seeing Evelina unoccupied, Magnus moved in like a polite shark. “To answer your earlier question,” he said in a quiet voice, clearly meant for her ears only, “my first clue about your bird was easily obtained from the vibrations left on the metal it was made of. I think you and I recognize each other for what we are.”

She remembered Bird saying that Magnus had caught her scent. So it’s true. Magic users can tell each other’s traces apart. She’d never known enough practitioners to test the theory.

He smiled gently. “I am a mesmerist by profession, but we share an interest in imaginative mechanics.”

She wondered just how imaginative he meant. Up to and including bringing them to life? She struggled to find polite words. “Is that so?”

“How were you introduced to the subject?”

“Here and there. Machines are like puzzles to solve.” She gave what she hoped was a convincing smile. “And I do like a good puzzle.”

He met her smirk for smirk.

“Perhaps you will find this of interest.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew something. He kept it hidden in his palm as the soup plates were whisked away and turbot drizzled with lemon sauce was served. This dish smelled of cracked pepper and parsley, and Evelina’s stomach perked up.

When the footmen had retreated, Magnus set the device down on the white damask linen of the tablecloth. It was a tiny beetle, made of a black, shiny metal. He made a gesture with his fingers, uttering a single word under his breath. With a faint clicking sound, the beetle scuttled across the snowy table, hiding under the gold- edged lips of the plates. Evelina tensed, certain one of the ladies was going to scream and faint dead away.

“Put that away!” she hissed. “Lady Bancroft doesn’t deserve to have her dinner ruined!”

And that was the least of it. He was using magic. In public. Hadn’t he heard about Nellie Reynolds? Evelina started to breathe hard and fast, her fingers digging into the edge of the table.

“I am a mesmerist of great renown, Miss Cooper,” the doctor all but purred. “People expect to have their perception dazzled when I am in the room.”

“You’re taking too great a risk.”

Magnus ignored her. The beetle burrowed unobserved through the wilderness of centrepieces and butter knives. It actually ran over Mrs. Fairchild’s wrist, climbing up and around her emerald bracelet, but she was too fascinated by her conversation with the younger Mr. Bellamy to do more than absently rub her skin after the beetle had been and gone. It puddled through some dropped sauce, tracking tiny dots of green behind it, before it finished its grand loop around their end of the table and returned to Magnus’s hand. He made another word and gesture and set it ceremoniously before Evelina.

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

Panic-stricken, she picked it up quickly, hiding it in her lap. It buzzed with the same slippery energy as she sensed from Magnus, and that made her want to wipe her hands on her napkin. She turned the creature over, half hiding it beneath the edge of the tablecloth and wishing the lights were brighter. A careful examination, however, revealed no way to wind the thing up. “How does it run?”

He bent close, so that his lips were close to her ear. He smelled of an exotic cologne. “A relatively simple spell.”

There is no deva!

“It’s a mere charlatan’s trick. The thing has no mind of its own, no independent intelligence. It burns with no more meaning than a match.”

Sorcery. When she turned to stare, his face was far too close to hers. She could tell from his expression that he saw the mix of curiosity and alarm on her face.

Magic was life. If it didn’t come from a trapped deva, there were only two other sources of power. One was the magic user’s own energy—dangerous, but still ethical. The other was life stolen from another. The blackest spells came from murder.

Folk practitioners like Gran Cooper used devas. The rest was the shadowy domain of sorcerers. Evelina set the beetle down on the table as fast as if it were a live scorpion. “A dangerous toy, my lord, if the wrong person saw you at play.” You could get us both imprisoned or killed!

To her vast relief, he scooped it up and put it back into his pocket. “Perhaps I am rash, but this demonstration saves a very long-winded explanation of what I am, and the fact that you comprehend the discussion tells me a great deal about you, Miss Cooper.”

His words jolted her like a hot needle.

“What do you want from me?” she demanded under her breath. If he found her understanding informative, she was learning a great deal by the fact that almost every word they’d exchanged had been in a whisper. Dr. Magnus wasn’t suitable for public conversations.

He waved his hand in the air. “My interest is in the search for truth. I have long believed that perfect truth will be found not as an abstract concept, but in living consciousness. Incarnate, so to speak.”

Magnus paused, surveying the next course. “Beef. How very English.”

Evelina tasted her food, but was too nervous to register the flavors. “And?”

“Mm. The rosemary is a nice touch. Where was I? Oh, yes. Truth is as old as creation. If you adopt the notion that man strives to reach perfection, to return to that perfect state of truth that existed at the moment of creation when spirit and flesh became manifest, you will have to concede that the rational mind, as demonstrated by our burgeoning level of technology, is an expression of our desire for truth and the blissful repose of perfect wisdom.”

“Excuse me?”

A flicker of impatience crossed his features. “Our inventions equal our desire to realize divine truth.”

“Because they’re rational and capable of perfection.” Despite her caution, Evelina was interested.

“Exactly.” He raised a finger in the air. “Machinery is rationalism meeting creativity. What’s missing from that equation is spirit. If we could infuse spirit into a machine, we would have achieved the perfect balance of truth. Not

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