Read The Double Life of Incorporate Things (Magic Most Foul) for Free Online Page B

around a clairvoyant. “Busy.”
    “Indeed. Not tomorrow? The day after, then. I’ll tell your father we’re out for lunch. I’ll indeed feed you, though I’m not sure we’ll have much of an appetite after we’re done with the place.”
    I just nodded, feeling a bit helpless and useless, wondering if, like the times before, the dark magic was just waiting around another corner I hadn’t anticipated. But at least my next two days would prove eventful. It was true, I was less trouble if I was busy. After a moment I realized Lavinia was staring at me with an intense scrutiny that surpassed custom.
    “You’re well intentioned, Miss Natalie. Worried you’ll fail, but well intentioned,” Lavinia said quietly, before turning to Mrs. Northe and elaborating. “It’s odd, ever since the incident, I smell things about persons, subtle scents, but suddenly I feel like I know the truth of their heart. You and the senator are powerful and inscrutable, but similarly well intentioned, though world-weary. I can sense it as if I were to taste the salt air of a long sea voyage.” She stopped herself as if she took a moment to truly listen to her own words.
    “No, I don’t think you’re mad, before you ask,” Mrs. Northe reassured. That sounded familiar. In the early days of our acquaintance, when I was convinced I was seeing the painting where Jonathon’s soul was imprisoned move, she’d said the same thing, bless her.
    “Jonathon sees that in auras,” I offered. “The ability to judge character you describe. Those of us who have been targeted by the Society end up, it would seem, coming away with more than we bargained for but something that can be useful in the right circumstances, as long as you’re brave enough to use it. I look at it as God trying to give us an advantage, a weapon borne out of toil and pain.”
    I’m not sure Mrs. Northe had ever given me such a proud look as she did just then. I suppose I sounded sort of like her.
    Lavinia stared at me, seeming to gain the kind of strength and sense of purpose I felt when I was called to save Jonathon, me and me alone. I found myself liking this girl who seemed to wish to rise to the challenge, not hide from it in fear. But the struggle was there in her pale eyes. I knew that too.
    Of course a thoughtful, complex girl like Lavinia Kent would be Mrs. Northe’s new project instead of her entitled, narrow-minded niece. Still, I’d have to see if there was something I could do to help Maggie, even if Mrs. Northe wouldn’t. The idiot girl had nearly gotten me killed, but I had the sense that I owed her some sympathy and aid. Maggie was a product of her age, her family. When I lost my ability to speak as a child, I’d become an outcast, I had to think of life differently, fend for myself differently. Miss Kent chose an outsider’s perspective due to her interests. Maggie was the sort of girl society expected her to be, until she toyed too close to the fires of dark magic and got us burned. But I was stronger than Maggie. I had to earn Lavinia’s sense that I was well intentioned. Not only for myself, but for others.
    We sipped some sort of sugary liqueur, and Lavinia drank in Mrs. Northe’s next instructions as if they were gospel. “Now, my dear girl, you must reach out to the rest of the members of your association and make sure none of them are trying to get ahold of the substance again, and if they are, we need to intercept those channels. Can you do this?”
    Lavinia nodded. “I’ll make my rounds tomorrow.”
    Tomorrow. Day by day, fate unfolded. Carefully, wrought with the terrible dread that hell would suddenly open before us. I feared the Master’s Society had been busy creating pitfalls for us, traps for us to walk into… My morbid imagination had been given such fodder in the past months that anything was possible, and all I could do was pray. But even prayer felt like flimsy comfort against a widening net that sought to catch us up and