"You go off and test that." Harry had seen Grey. "See what you find. Wager 'alf a crown it's wizardry o' some sort."
"I'll not take that wager, sir." Tipple shook his head, grinning. "Not since it came from the brass side." He carried the scraper off to one of the beaker-covered tables, his other hand cupped beneath it, as if he thought he could catch whatever ephemera the instrument contained in his hand. Perhaps he could.
Harry came up to Grey, scowling. "Don't know 'ow these lads get anything done, with you peerin' over their shoulders all th' time."
"They're accustomed to it. They would think me ailing if I did not appear at least once in a day to peer." Grey clasped his hands behind his back. "What have you found?"
"Evidence all the magics were used, or at least attempted." Harry's scowl became even more fierce. "An' if they were all twisted as nasty as the alchemy 'e used-" he shook his head.
"The conjury was. You found sorcery as well?"
Harry threw up his hands. "May have. Don't know enough about sorcery to be sure. What do you get when you try to work magic with blood taken unwillingly? Not sorcery. Do you get anyfing at all? How's Pearl?" he said, in an abrupt change of subject.
"Astonishingly well. She's in her study, reading."
"You didn't keep 'er 'ome another day to recover?" Harry looked scandalized. "You'd 'ave done as much for one o' your Briganti."
"There's not a mark on her to recover from." Grey let his astonishment and his disgruntlement show. "The blisters are completely gone from her arms and hands. Not even a trace of redness remains. I assume the burns I cannot see are equally healed, since her arms received the worst of it."
"That strong of magic workin' that fast needs rest."
"She's sitting down in her study in a very large, comfortable chair, resting as much as she would at home. More, most likely." Grey parroted the arguments Pearl had used on him. "Besides, have you been able to make Elinor do anything she did not want to do or stay away from any place she particularly wanted to visit? My apprentice is no less stubborn."
He paused, looking about the laboratory, feeling foolish for not noticing sooner. "Speaking of Elinor, where is she?"
"In 'er stillroom," Harry said. "It's comin' up to dark of the moon, an' she's got some preparations to make for potions as got to be brewed then."
"Dark-" Grey turned and sprinted up the stairs two at a time.
Harry followed a step or two behind. "What? Was it something I said?"
Grey didn't slow his pace back to the I-Branch offices. "Dark of the moon. It's been three weeks and some since the murder, which means it was likely close to the previous new moon. I want to know for certain."
"Think it means anything?" Harry had caught up.
"I don't know. It might. It's another piece of information. This was murder by magic. Murder for magic. Conjury is tied to the moon, to its rise and set. Wizardry is tied to the moon's phases and seasons. Sorcery likely is, too. A woman's cycle correlates to the moon phases." Grey burst through the door.
"Moon phase calendar," he announced. "Who's got one?"
"Here, sir." The man closest to the door handed him a pocket-size leather-bound book, which opened up into a small, well-marked calendar.
"Thank you." Grey looked at him. "Loring, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've got it for moonrise times, but it shows the full and new moons as well."
"So I see." Grey studied the newest recruit to I-Branch ranks, a transfer from the enforcers. "Your spirits rise with the moon?"
"Starting to, sir. I've got one from Cromwell's rule who'll answer then."
"Excellent. Excellent work." Grey clapped him on the shoulder and opened the small calendar flat on Loring's desk. Harry and those in the office who could crowded around.
Grey ransacked his mind for facts. "Angus Galloway's body was found early on October 12. So he was murdered sometime in the night of the eleventh to the twelfth. And the new moon was-"
He leaned down to see the tiny print. "The night of the twelfth. Galloway was murdered before the dark of the moon."
"Only one day before," Loring said.
"So how important is it that the spell be worked precisely at the dark of the moon?" Grey asked, looking around the cavernous office. "Where's Ferguson?"
"Off with that Greek alchemist you brought in," Meade, his second-in-command, said.
"Oh, right."
"Depends on the spell, I imagine," Harry said. "An' since we don't know what spell this murderin'-" He paused and looked carefully around the room. The occupants were all male. "Th' murderin' bastard was tryin' to work, we can't be sure."
"October 11 was a Sunday." Loring pointed to the date.
"So he was performing a Black Mass?" Grey said. "Desecrating the Sabbath?"
"Maybe he's a workin' man and has to do his murderin' on 'is day off," Harry said.
"That is another possibility," Grey admitted. "Or the date and the phase of the moon means nothing at all. All good possibilities."
"So how do you know?" Loring asked. "How do you discover which possibility is the correct one?"
"Lab work," Harry said.
"Investigation and interviews," Meade added.
"Or-" Grey's thoughts took a grim turn. "Another murder gives us more to go on."
Silence fell and stretched until Harry broke it. "On that lovely note, I'm goin' back to th' lab."
"Moon rises at six," Meade said to Grey. "Think you can participate in an effort to call our murder victim tonight?"
"He's not strong enough to rise with the moon yet," Grey said absently. "I'll be back at midnight for the attempt." He shot a quick glance around the room. "All conjurers are off duty until then for rest hours."
"Yes, sir." Meade all but saluted. Would have, Grey was sure, if he hadn't forbidden it. Enforcement might have its quasi-military elements, but Investigations Branch was relentlessly civilian. He went to collect Pearl and get his necessary rest in.
GREY ACTUALLY SLEPT during his mandated rest period. He'd instituted the rest requirement not long after I-Branch had been created, because too many conjurers were getting too little rest and the magic was sucking them dry. He'd had to practically tie Meade to his bed to keep him from becoming a walking skeleton, and Meade was a naturally stocky man. Stuffing food down a man's throat was necessary, but it didn't make up for a lack of sleep, not over the long haul.
Meade had made it clear that Grey couldn't insist on rules if he didn't follow them himself, so he took his required nap. He met Pearl in the breakfast room for dinner, feeling half awake and grumpy rather than bright and refreshed. Naps did that to him, but he would be grateful by midnight. "How is your reading going?"
"Quite well. The book is informative." Pearl smiled so widely, her teeth glinted in the candlelight, immediately sensitizing his suspicion nerves.
"Tells you how to do it with step-by-step instructions, does it?" He maintained a casual air-but not too casual-so as not to set off her suspicion alert in turn.
"In an archaic ‘hath-doth-givest' round-about-ish annoying sort of way," she grumbled, sounding much more like herself.
Grey let himself relax a fraction. "What have you learned?"
She blew out a breath. "Guild secrets for one thing. Sorcery's stuffed full with them."
"And you don't think they should be kept secret?"
"Oh no. I agree with them completely. It just-" She wrinkled her nose in a manner that was not in the least adorable, if he was dishonest with himself. "It makes it difficult to discuss the situation and the spell with you. Since you are my magic-master, but you are not a sorcerer."
"I can see that would be difficult. But we are Englishmen and Englishwomen. We rise above mere difficulty. What have you learned? If you can tell me without betraying any sorcerous secrets." He watched her pick her way through her thoughts.
"Well . . ." She thought some more. "Justice magic begins with a technique the book calls ‘the foundation of sorcerye.' Riding the blood."
"Do you need another book? Is the justice magic too advanced for a three-weeks' apprentice?"
"No, I don't need another book. This one described the technique quite well. And justice magic seems to be in that basic, elementary category of sorcery, one of the first done with blood rather than-" She waved a hand toward her mouth.
"Saliva?" Grey chuckled. "You're going to have to get over your aversion for the word."
"I'm going to have to remember to use it. Saliva magic sounds so much better than spit magic." She sighed. "I have enough trouble remembering to be ladylike, and spit is not."