Page 123 of Summer of Sacrifice

Cal pulled at her hand, tugging her to the side of the crowd, away from the horrid, captivating display on the platform. “We have to hurry,” he whispered when they reached the alley next to the platform. “I don’t know how long his discussion will be.”

He was shaking slightly, and she pulled him to a stop. “Are you all right?”

“I–I don’t know.” He pulled out his plague doctor mask and slipped it on, Seleste doing the same. In unison, they pulled their hoods lower and slunk through the alley toward Société de Guerre.

Société de Guerre was dark and dreary, the scents of myriad chemicals and dust stinging Seleste’s nose. Wall sconces lined the eerily quiet corridors, but their flickering did little to chase away the gloom. The upper floors didn’t exude anything sinister, they were merely filled with moody, academic rooms befitting a secret society of learned men and women.

But there was something in the air. Something just the wrong side of peculiar. Lingering, as if it was drifting up from below. From the restricted lower level they were standing at the door of.

“Goddess’ bones,” Cal muttered as he stood from where he was crouched at the door. “I can’t get the lock, even with these picks.”

“Keep a lookout.” She shoved him over. “I’ll do it.”

He paused for half a breath to eye her with an equal measure of surprise and delight. “Why should I not be shocked you know how to pick locks?”

Seleste didn’t answer. She was too busy snatching the lock picks from him and shoving them in the lock. Though their father had taught them to pick locks as children—much to their mother’s dismay—only Sorscha and Aggie seemed to have retained the gift. Seleste wasn’t having any more luck with it than Cal had.

“Check the other hall,” she whispered harshly. “I think I heard something!”

Cal’s face broke into alarm and he darted around the corner just long enough for Seleste to use her magic to unlock the door. She was opening it slowly when Cal returned, face flushed.

“I didn’t see any– You got it open!” He moved to kiss her in celebration, catching himself a hairsbreadth from her lips, shifting to drop a chaste kiss to her cheek awkwardly instead. “Well done.”

One lone gaslamp shone on the wall, its flickering flame doing little to light the staircase. Together, they descended into the belly of the beast.

“Pull your mask back down,” Cal whispered through his as he adjusted it back in place.

Seleste did as instructed, wishing it was easier to see through the blasted thing. How were physicians expected to treat plague patients, or scientific men expected to conduct experiments if they couldn’t see out of the goggles or past the obscenely long leather beak?

They descended the last step, cautious. Cal was fairly certain most everyone was attending the symposium or assisting with it, but there was always a chance a straggler could be in the basement.

Blessedly, there was no one in sight. Only a large mechanism identical to the one on Dr. de Montfort’s platform, save for its size. A massive replica. Cal was shaking his head, plague doctor mask making him look like a giant, disgruntled crow.

“It wasn’t this large when I came down here a moon ago—the mechanism.”

In unison, they rounded the structure from either side. When they reached the front of it, Seleste put a hand to her chest, backing up, and Cal cursed. A corpse sat slumped in the wooden chair, emaciated chest strapped in place.

“Goddess above,” Cal uttered. “It— I think this is Lord Nicolas Fontaine.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Seleste whispered, unable to tear her eyes from the corpse. Why didn’t it smell? The sickly sweet scent of death was hardly present at all.

“The duke’s son.”

Her attention snapped to Cal. “Next on the list… But this—” She gestured toward the poor lord. “This is obvious. Surely everyone will know now that these are murders.” Her cunning snapped so much information together at once that she felt dizzy.

Cal lept to steady her. “Are you all right? We should go. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

But Seleste waved him off, scowling behind her leather crow’s beak. “It’s not my delicate constitution, Cal,” she explained. “This is too obvious. Unless Lord Nicolas died of some seemingly natural cause or illness and these men took him from the morgue as they did the subject at the symposium. We need to look into the circumstances of his death. Dr. de Montfort said the subjects needed to be fresh.”

She moved closer to the corpse, inspecting it. “There doesn’t seem to be much decay present. That leads me to believe his emaciated chest was present prior to death.” She turned to Cal, her boring black skirts swishing with the movement. “What poisons remain?”

Cal pulled the list from his pocket and smoothed it out on a cluttered worktable, inspecting it in the light of a lamp. “This would all be a lot easier if they were in order,” he muttered, his voice muffled by the mask. “We’d know who was being targeted and we could decode the names.”

“We will have several connected at this point. We should be able to look into the faux names now that we have a distinct poison connected to each. This name here next to arsenic, it has to be your father, and so forth.”

Cal nodded resolutely, his mask bobbing, and ticked off the names of the remaining poisons.

“Belladonna. Irregular heartbeats, nausea, hallucinations,” Cal stated. “It slowly drives one mad?—”

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