lamplight and then began sorting the pages into order, looking for any further instructions on how to activate the automaton. He couldn’t see a proper power source, and that made him curious. In terms of appearance, she was a superior product, but the real test of manufacture came when the gears were in motion.
Tobias leaned with his back to the worktable, his legs crossed at the ankles. The spidery writing on the pages was in Italian. Not his best language. Still, it didn’t take him long to realize it was the notebook of Serafina’s original maker.
“I am dying,” he read. Lovely. He was distinctly not in the mood for someone else’s brooding. “I stole the pin and threw it in the holy well before the cathedral. God willing, this theft will save my life.”
Tobias dropped the pages back into the trunk and picked up the brandy bottle, returning to the table to stand looking down at Serafina.
It was hard not to be rattled by something that looked so alive, but wasn’t. In the flickering light of the candle lantern, the porcelain features seemed soft as flesh, the intersections of jaw and joint nearly invisible. Whoever had sculpted her had loved the female form, down to the details of her the perfect, pink-tipped breasts, and the swell and dip of belly and thigh. Shadows seemed to press in around them, the silence in the room profound. He could hear the pulse of his own blood.
Tobias blinked, his fingers tightening on the bottle. He could swear the shadows were actually seeping into the doll, like a thick, dark smoke. Weird, roiling darkness was rising from the floor, creeping up the legs of the table and worming under the inanimate form like something insectile. The doll was absorbing it into her sawdust flesh.
And Tobias felt himself growing weaker, as if he were losing blood.
He unhooked the lamp from the hook on the ceiling, bringing it closer to the worktable. Details jumped into focus. The patch of Serafina’s hair that was uneven had not been cut, but burned away, as if she had leaned too close to a candle.
He leaned close. The hair smelled of smoke, but there was a fresh scent, too, as if she had been out of doors not long ago. He would have expected staleness, but she could not have been locked in the trunk long. Magnus must have taken her apart for repairs very recently.
And brought her to SPIE to be put back together. The task the doctor had set wasn’t to challenge their skill —that was certain. It had taken a delicacy of touch to hook the doll’s fine workings back together, but Tobias could have done the whole job himself in an afternoon. So what had the doctor said?
He didn’t have long to wait for an answer. The sawdust chest rose in a breath.
Terror bolted up his spine. Tobias skittered back from the table, his disbelieving cry bouncing off the lowering shadows.
The following silence was suffocating. Suddenly, there seemed to be no air in the place, despite the doorway open to the night. He rubbed his eyes, sure his imagination had run riot. But his mind raced anyway, trying to straighten out what he’d seen the way a maid tidied an unmade bed. No rumples. No wrinkles. Just rational, tidy corners.
Nausea robbed the strength from his legs. He sat down hard in the chair.
“Sorcerers don’t trick men into assembling evil dolls.” He said it out loud, trying to forget all Magnus’s prattle about bridegrooms and nourishment, and all Bucky’s talk about vampire brides.
He needed to reject these thoughts out loud, because he was quite clearly drunk and nearly swallowing the nonsense whole. But he might have also said that strangers didn’t unexpectedly mentor talent that rested on the fame of a single prank at the opera. Good Samaritans didn’t lure talented young men by appealing to that hurt in their soul left by a bitter father.
If Tobias wanted a fairy tale, he had to look no further than his own wishful thinking. Magnus had taken an interest because he wanted Tobias for his mysterious other project.
He put his hand on the doll’s chest, ready to convince himself that it wasn’t actually moving, but he felt it lift. Tobias started to tremble, tears filling his eyes.
“I am dying,” the Italian had written. Death magic worked by stealing life. Did Serafina survive by draining her makers?
So … what was he looking at? A mechanism? A miracle? The stirrings of a creature set to devour him? In the nursery tales, there was always a test of faith. Was he supposed to trust Dr. Magnus, no matter what? To keep courage and accept whatever dark, shadowy horror the doctor threw at him, because that was the only way to move onward to the bigger project, to the next level, and to get the support he needed to be his own man?
Serafina’s eyes snapped open, the relentless china blue fixed on his face. Then one hand lifted, the delicate, porcelain fingers reaching out and grazing his cheek in a slick, chill caress. Then her jaw opened with a slight click, showing the white tips of tiny, perfect teeth in an eerily charming smile.
Tobias made a sound between a groan and a cry of terror. Before he could stop to think, he pulled out the pin. He stood with it in his hand, tears hot on his cheeks.
He’d wondered who he was. Now he knew.
Tobias Roth was a desperate coward.
Chapter Thirty-two
HILLIARD HOUSE
Evelina sat before her dressing-table mirror, not seeing the image before her. She was aware that it was a sunny morning, sparkling as champagne on ice. She could hear Imogen’s excited voice down the corridor, exclaiming about a button or a feather or some crisis of absolutely national import. She could feel the heavy richness of her presentation gown, the white folds like a blanket of snow around her.
But none of it could quite penetrate the haze in her mind. She was adrift, spiraling like a twig down a stream, powerless against the rushing force. Evelina had known even as a child that leaving the circus would take her away from all she knew, but now she understood how irrevocable that act had been. There would be no return. Even if she could go back to Ploughman’s, it would never again be the place she knew.
Gran Cooper was dead. Nick hadn’t told her. She had learned it from Old Ploughman himself, his manner kind and delighted to see her again, but unsure what to say. The winter had taken the old woman barely two years after Evelina had left. All her other kin was gone, too, taking up regular occupations or moving on in search of richer shows, though Ploughman had kept the Fabulous Flying name of the Coopers’ old act.
She hadn’t asked for any more details. Too shocked to prolong the visit, too afraid of whom else she might
