“It seems I am shattering a number of them in this case.”

An odd silence descended. The housekeeper’s footsteps sounded in the hall. Mrs. Crofton opened the door and brought in the tea tray. She looked at Virginia.

“Shall I pour, madam?”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Crofton,” Virginia said.

Mrs. Crofton poured two cups of tea and handed them out. She left the room, unobtrusively closing the door. It seemed to Owen that the study was suddenly even smaller and more intimate. He opened his senses a little, allowing himself to savor the sensation of being so close to Virginia.

“Will you assist me, Miss Dean?” he asked after a while.

“Someone has murdered two glass-readers in the past two months,” she said. “Yesterday I was lured to the scene of a rather spectacular murder that involved a mirrored room. And then there is that clockwork curiosity that we encountered in the tunnels beneath the Hollister mansion. All in all, there is simply no way to explain any of those events by invoking coincidence. Yes, Mr. Sweetwater, I will assist you in your investigation.”

“I am very pleased to hear that.”

“Before we begin, I trust you will understand when I tell you that I have some concerns for my reputation in this affair.”

Out of nowhere, cold outrage flashed through him. “I assure you, Miss Dean, the men of my family may be hunters, but we consider ourselves gentlemen. I have no intention of harming your good name.”

She blinked in surprise, and then smiled. “Thank you for that assurance, but it is unnecessary. It is not my personal reputation that matters to me. At my advanced age and given the nature of my career, I need no longer worry about that sort of thing.”

“What the devil are you talking about? You are hardly elderly.”

“I am twenty-six, sir. That puts me well and truly on the shelf, as I’m sure you are aware. I will not be looking to contract a respectable marriage. It is my professional reputation among my colleagues that concerns me.”

He frowned. “I don’t see the problem.”

“Really, sir, you are being quite dense. Let me spell it out for you.”

People had called him a great many things, but dense was not among the words that were typically used to describe him.

“Please do,” he said.

“It is imperative that none of my associates conclude that I am assisting you to expose other practitioners. That is the sort of rumor that would ruin me.”

“Of course.” He really had been quite dense, he thought. “I had not considered that aspect of the matter.”

“It must be very clear to one and all that I am allowing you to study and observe my work only because I am convinced I can prove to you that I really do possess some talent.”

“Yes, Miss Dean. That was my plan.”

“If there is any gossip to the effect that I am betraying my colleagues, I will soon lose all of my friends and the connections I require to conduct business in my world.”

“You have made your point, Miss Dean. I will do everything in my power to make certain that your colleagues believe that I am devoting all of my attentions to you and you alone.”

“Excellent.” She sat back in her chair. “In that case, let us discuss your plans. I can advise you whether or not they are viable. I expect you will have to make some modifications. After all, we will be operating in my world, not yours, sir. I am the expert.”

He wondered just when he had lost control of the discussion. If he was not extremely careful, Virginia Dean would take charge of the entire investigation, and that would put her in even more danger than she was in already.

An oddly disturbing shock of awareness whispered through him. He had embarked upon the investigation because his talent had compelled him to accept the case from J & J. There was a monster preying on the paranormal practitioners of London, and he had been called to the hunt. It was what the Sweetwaters did. It was in the blood.

But somewhere along the line the driving force behind his decision to find the killer had altered. Now he hunted to protect Virginia. The only way to do that, it seemed, was to put her at risk by involving her in the investigation. Be careful what you wish for, Sweetwater.

“I have one more question,” Virginia said.

“Only one?”

“What do you intend to do if we are able to identify the killer?”

He set his cup and saucer aside, propped his elbows on the arms of the chair and put his fingertips together. “Caleb Jones informs me that J & J has developed a policy that it applies to situations such as this.”

“What is J & J’s policy?”

“If there is sufficient evidence that is not of a paranormal nature, evidence that will hold up in a court of law, said evidence will be turned over to Scotland Yard. The authorities will then take charge, and the criminal will be arrested and tried in the normal, routine manner.”

“I see. What are the odds that that policy will be effective in this case?”

“Very poor.”

She watched him intently. “But one way or another, the killer will be stopped, is that what you are telling me?”

“One does not hire the Sweetwaters if there is anything normal or routine about the investigation,” he said gently. “Our clients come to us when they have run out of options. We are the last resort.”

SEVEN

The following morning, Virginia called on her closest friend, Charlotte Tate, and told her the whole story.

“Thank heavens you are safe and were able to save that poor street girl.” Charlotte poured tea into two cups. Behind the lenses of her spectacles, her unusual amber eyes were shadowed with concern. “But I still can’t believe that you came so close to being arrested for murder.”

“I expect that I will have nightmares about waking up next to Hollister’s body for some time,” Virginia said.

Charlotte set the pot down. “I don’t want to even think about what might have happened if Mr. Sweetwater had not come along when he did. You would likely never have escaped from that mirrored chamber, let alone figured out how to rescue the girl from that underground cell.”

“It’s true, I do lack lock-picking skills,” Virginia said. “Perhaps I will ask Mr. Sweetwater to teach them to me. He was very adept, I must say.”

They were sitting at the small table in the back room of Charlotte’s bookshop. Charlotte had inherited the shop from her mother, who had, in turn, received it from her mother. The women of Charlotte’s family had a true talent for locating ancient and rare books and manuscripts linked to the paranormal.

The bookshop did not stock the latest sensation novels or penny dreadfuls. The weighty, leather-bound tomes on the shelves ranged from archaic treatises on ancient Egyptian, Indian and Greek theories of the paranormal to journals devoted to the investigations of modern researchers. In between there were medieval works on metaphysics and Newton’s speculations on alchemy.

Three of the shelves in the shop contained an extensive collection of the Journal of Paranormal and Psychical Research, the Arcane Society’s official publication. There were, however, no copies of the Leybrook Institute’s own very popular Leybrook Journal of Paranormal Investigations. Unfortunately, the Institute’s publication was replete with papers that bore titles such as “An Investigation of the Usefulness of Certain Musical Instruments in the Summoning of Spirits” and “A Study of Levitation and Astral Travel.” In other words, Virginia thought, Leybrook published a great deal of fiction. But as Gilmore Leybrook had explained, the Institute’s Journal sold far more copies than Arcane’s decidedly more esoteric publication.

“Lock-picking is no doubt a useful ability for a man in Mr. Sweetwater’s profession,” Charlotte said. She frowned. “I certainly didn’t turn up any information about psychical talent in the bloodline when I looked into Mr. Sweetwater’s background for you a couple of weeks ago.”