The Double Life of Incorporate Things (Magic Most Foul) by Leanna Hieber Read Free Book Online Page B

help the blush. “You’re a very good writer, Miss Stewart.” Even worse. There went the heat of my cheeks a few degrees further. He released me from his stare and turned again to Jonathon. “My contact, Mister Knowles, tells me you met a certain ‘Majesty,’ and there has been correspondence.” Jonathon nodded. “May I see it, please? Do you have it with you?”
    Jonathon reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a letter with the familiar, insidious red and gold seal of The Master’s Society, the one he’d withheld from me pertaining to the offices and looking in on Stevens. “They have three avenues of experimentation,” Jonathon explained. “Splitting the soul from the body, I was the unfortunate test on that. Reanimation had us dealing with poor Doctor Preston. And now, pharmacology, with the chemical given to Veil’s Associates.” He lifted up the note and proffered it to Brinkman for perusal. “This may have come before what you assume was the undoing of my cover in Doctor Preston’s death. How should I proceed with this Doctor Stevens? I went to the offices herein, but there is nothing there.”
    “Are you entirely sure about that?” Brinkman asked.
    “Indeed. I’ve a way of…seeing things,” Jonathon replied carefully, keeping the particulars of his new gifts out of the discussion. “No living soul was present there.”
    “ Seeing things?”
    “Keen eyes, Mister Brinkman,” I offered quietly. “I do hope you have them too.”
    “Things are never exactly as they seem at first glance with the Society,” Brinkman replied cryptically.
    “And you? Are you as you seem at first glance?” I queried. “What reason do we have to trust you?”
    Jonathon flashed me a warning glance not to be too harsh and was quick to add: “I’ve my reasons for why I will trust you, Mister Brinkman. But I also have ways of knowing if you’ve betrayed me to my enemy, so I’d truly not suggest you do so. Are you saying I should try these addresses again?”
    “I think you might find evidence there. Persons, no. The Master’s Society manages to operate with scant personnel that don’t keep regular patterns, the bane of any spy.”
    Brinkman held up the Master’s Society letter to the light. He fished in his own breast pocket and produced a small vial with a sponge on the stopper. He uncorked the vial, brushed the damp sponge over the paper and something bloomed forth in response.
    My mouth hung open a bit at this magic, and Brinkman smiled again as he explained: “Sympathetic stain. Terribly useful in espionage. Your American Revolutionary rings, that Culper set, were quite fond of it. Your troops gained many advantages passed through unsuspecting pages.” He glanced down at what had been revealed, then passed it to Jonathon. It was a date. The following Tuesday. “It is likely Master’s Society protocol, then, to encode something important within the letter. Something is obviously scheduled.”
    “Another experiment?” Jonathon posed. “Should we expect for another ‘outbreak’ like what happened with Nathaniel’s Association?” He turned to his countryman. “We believe we need to find their center of operations to terminate the beast at its source. I hope you’ll help us in that quest, Mister Brinkman.”
    “It changes, they’ve several offices. I’ve only pinpointed two, there may be four. They seem to like to commandeer grand spaces.”
    At this, Jonathon’s jaw clenched, and his crystalline eyes darkened. “I don’t suppose you’ve any news of my Greenwich estate.”
    “The situation will have to be...addressed, Lord Denbury. I don’t believe the tenants who overtook your manor are fully in control there; Knowles informed me that he thinks something is a bit off.”
    “Could that be a center of operations?” I asked.
    “In part, perhaps, though their focus seems to zero in on a few cities, London, New York, Chicago. That your estate got swept into this is rather an outlier, my