Eventually, Elias reappeared at the foot of the stairs with an annoyed frown on his face. “You, Miss Ettings!” he barked.
Dora blinked over at him.
“You have a tolerable understanding of French, I believe?” he asked.
“Yes, tolerable,” Dora agreed.
Elias gestured towards the stairs. “I’ll need your opinion on a translation.”
Dora rose to her feet and headed over to join him. To her mild disappointment, Miss Jennings followed after her this time.
Upstairs, Elias settled Dora in front of one of those medieval French tomes, whereupon she struggled through a translation of the qualities of the phlegmatic humour. After she had read it to him multiple times, the Lord Sorcier nodded and pulled out his wooden wand, passing it over Jane. Nothing in particular happened that Dora could see, and Elias frowned in consternation.
“Were you expecting something in particular, my lord?” Miss Jennings asked curiously. The ex-governess, it seemed, was not immune to the novelty of watching a magician work.
“If we are dealing with an imbalance of humours, then phlegm seems to be the most likely culprit,” Elias said slowly, as though thinking aloud. “According to these scholars, too much of it should lead to sleepiness. And if phlegm is associated with water, as they say, then I should be able to dowse its overabundance. But she has a child’s tiny share of phlegm, it seems, and not an overabundance at all.” Elias turned towards the two of them. “Might I compare to one of the two of you? Miss Ettings—” He paused and shook his head, and Dora thought that he must have remembered too late that she was also unlikely to have a normal set of humours. “Miss Jennings,” he corrected himself. “If you would.”
The ex-governess agreed, with the sort of smile that suggested she would be telling the story of her examination by the Lord Sorcier for the next few weeks, at least. Elias passed his wand before her—and this time, it seemed to waver in his hand this way and that, as though pulled along on an invisible tide.
This did not seem to please him, of course, since it had put him back to square one—Miss Jennings had even more phlegm than Jane did, and the ex-governess was still quite wide awake. Elias let out a violent sigh and closed the book in front of Dora. “Not the humours, then!” he said crossly. “How useless.” Elias waved them away. “I will be at this all night. Unless the two of you intend to sleep in the other bed, you will wish to take your leave soon.”
“That does not sound so terrible,” Dora observed. Miss Jennings shot her a bewildered look, however, and Dora realised that she had said something strange again. “I was... attempting a joke,” Dora offered. “Please forgive me.” She still wasn’t quite sure which part of the suggestion was so unbelievable, without any hint to go on, but Miss Jennings had seemed so instantly astonished that Dora supposed it was something to do with her chaperone’s duties.
“We’ll take our leave, then,” Miss Jennings informed Elias. She took Dora’s arm, and the two of them headed for the door. Dora could not help but glance back over her shoulder as they left, however.
The last thing she saw before leaving was the tense, frustrated figure of the Lord Sorcier, settling into a chair to theorise anew.
Chapter 9
Auntie Frances was at home when Dora returned with Miss Jennings. She was instantly eager to hear all about how Dora’s day had gone and whether she had successfully caught Albert’s attentions. Dora found that she was feeling less patient with this nonsense than usual, given the things she had seen that afternoon—but her aunt could not tell the difference between Dora’s normal distraction and her current shortness, which played in her favour for once. Dora mentioned Albert’s assertion that she would be welcome to join him in his work again, which pleased her aunt well enough that she only frowned a little bit at the addendum that Dora had spent part of the afternoon helping the Lord Sorcier instead of Albert.
Vanessa, it turned out, was at a private dinner party that evening—and so Dora took her dinner in her room, and stared at her dresser with a great temptation. Somehow, she managed to hold herself off for another hour yet, before she went to retrieve the mirror there.
Dora’s mind was so intent upon Elias that it did not take her long to solidify the sight of him in her imagination. A vision of him swam before her, now sitting in a chair next to Jane’s bed with an awful, tired-looking expression on his face.
Since Elias had felt her presence before, Dora had to assume that he knew already of her intrusion. Still, there was a long silence before she could figure out just what to say.
“Things are not going well,” Dora observed evenly. The idea pressed upon her more heavily than she could properly express.
“I have spent all of this time trying to formulate theories and tests for when we found another victim,” Elias said wearily. “I thought certainly, this time, that one of my ideas would work. But I have tried everything on my list, and I am out of ideas once again.”
There was a grim finality to that statement that Dora very much did not like.
“But you have time,” she said slowly. “You have found the victim much sooner, you said. And Jane does not seem to be feverish or suffering.”
Elias closed his eyes. “It is difficult to keep alive someone who cannot eat or drink on their own,” he said. “Mrs Dun will do her best. But I cannot in good conscience raise your hopes.”
Dora settled onto the other empty bed, nearby. It had no weight, and no real feeling beneath her fingers. But it was so easy for her to forget what real things felt like that it hardly made a difference, she decided, if she were awake or dreaming or scrying.
She was
