Page 5 of Foresyth Conservatory
Touché. It wasn’t as fun being on the receiving end.
“Fine. I’m not enamored with being a reader, but it covers my expenses. Plenty of people dislike their professions.”
“Did your father dislike his?” the Meister pressed.
I shot out of my seat, pointing my finger at the door. I wouldn’t let this stranger speak of my father. “You, sir, are kindly asked to leave now. Keep your money—the reading’s on the house. But make haste out of my property.”
The Meister swallowed but didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Dahlia. I only meant to imply that you’d find employment under me far more gratifying than being the sole proprietorof a business you lack respect for,” he said, adjusting his spectacles.
I sank back into my chair as he continued. “I’ve come to you because I find myself in somewhat of a precarious situation. You see . . . a dark stain rests on the Conservatory. Last semester, we lost a student.” He paused for a moment, his tone turning grave. His eyes darted to the Hanged Man still upturned on my reading table.
“Though the authorities ruled it a suicide, I personally suspect foul play. That’s all I can say before we’re under agreement, you understand. And, well, I have limited options for hiring a private detective as the Conservatory is not so hospitable to outsiders. We don’t trust many people. Hiring you as a detective as well as a student solves my tricky situation. You are the daughter of the infamous Detective Blackburne, and you more or less have the right background to be admitted as a student.”
“You want me to investigate the other students?”
“Yes, precisely. I need to know who did it and why. I can’t bear this stain of darkness on my school—not after all I’ve done, all I’ve invested to get magickal sciences taken seriously in the academic world. I don’t want anyone thinking we’re just another faction like the rest . . . We are a prestigious institution of higher education.
“And you, my fine madame detective, not only will you hold the prestige of attending my Conservatory—as I noticed you do not have any secondary education—but I will be glad to pay you handsomely. If you find the killer, I’ll reward you with a two-thousand-dollar bounty. Plus, the stipend you’ll make as a research assistant, of course.”
Two thousand dollars. Did I hear him correctly? That was enough to pay off the bookshop mortgage three times over, and then some. I could double my collection of antique tomes. Maybe even take a trip east or west—maybe circle around and do both.
“I can see you’re thinking it over. That’s all I ask. Keep the acceptance letter—show it to anyone who might miss your absence for the year. I’ll be back in a fortnight to collect your answer at the start of our spring term.”
The Meister picked up his cane from the back of the chair and sauntered to the door, just as he had come in. He left the sack of coins in the middle of the table, along with the letter.
“And one more thing, Dahlia. Look too long into the void, and it will begin to recognize you. You’d best follow me out of it.”
As he exited, the Meister flipped the sign on the door toClosedand smiled once more over his shoulder before slipping off into the storm. And I was left alone in the deafening silence of my bookstore.
“There are two main reasons a person would choose the career of a detective. The first is that they are a man—or woman—of justice. They believe that no wrong deed should go unpunished, and that the closure justice provides can heal the soul of the victim and those beloved by him. The second reason is that the man—as is usually the case—sees great darkness within himself and pursues vanquishing darkness in the world in an attempt to rid himself of it. I have not yet decided which reason is mine. Though deep down, I have a guess.”
—The Journal of Daniel Blackburne, 1906
Chapter 3. Burning a Hole in Blackburne
I closed the shop and spread the money out on my reading table. Ten whole dollars—over three times my usual daily earnings.
The money went quickly.
Half went to the roof thatcher, as the tiles had been rotting for years, and he required a “hazard” charge due to the patch of black mold growing on the shingles. I paid another dollar to replace the waterlogged window panels and re-board the doors (luckily, no hazard fee was required). I also spent a bit on a new glass case for some of my rarer tomes, something I should’ve done years ago. Some of the pages had already crinkled from the summer’s humidity.
I had enough left over to buy goods from the market and prepare a lavish meal for myself and my mother—a fatty leg of lamb to roast, two pounds of golden potatoes, a pound of lard, two loaves of sourdough bread, and a sack of cabbage and carrots to make a stew from the leftovers.
With my future research stipend, I could repair the bookstore and buy a meal like this every week. And that wasn’t even counting the bounty the Meister offered for finding the Conservatory killer.
“He gave you how much?” Gabriel’s chestnut eyes widened as I recounted the story over a pile of books at our usual picnic spot outside of Greenwich Library. I found him on his lunch break at our rendezvous point. He’d been working at the library ever since he could read. While I was taggingalong with my father during his investigations, Gabriel was here, reading and caretaking for books. At his core, he was a guardian of the written word—far better than I would ever be. I envied him in some ways. He lived contentedly among bookstacks, never desiring to reenact their adventures.
“Ten dollars in silver,” I said between bites of my apple. My satchel was heavy from the trip to the market, and I sighed as I set it down on the grass. “And he offered me a job. Well, a stipend, technically.” I passed him my acceptance letter. “But listen to this—the whole scholarship is a ruse. He really wants to hire me as a detective. There was a death there last year, and he suspects one of the students.”
There was a dark part of me that delighted in the prospect of a murder—of a puzzle to solve. Maybe that was the reason I had become a Tarot reader—it was the closest I got to uncovering humanity’s dark truths like my father had. But there was another part that remembered my father’s scowl and the sallow pockets under his eyes caused by the sleepless nights he worked on a case. Before he died, he made me promise that I’d stay far away from his line of work.
Keep to the library. Books can’t hurt you like people can, he had said. I swallowed the bite of apple, some of it sticking in my throat.
“You’re not seriously considering it, are you, Dahl? That amount seems a bit high for a scholarship,” Gabriel said, studying the letter as though it were a sacred manuscript with his fingers at the outermost edges.
“It’s not just a scholarship. Like I said, it’s a job offer,” I said, chewing my next bite more slowly. This wasn’t the time for my pride to get in the way. “I was hoping you could look into the Meister of the school. His name is ChristopherRenate. He could be in his fifties, maybe sixties. His accent seems English. He came into my shop knowing too much about me, and I don’t like that imbalance of knowledge.”
“Sure, I’ll have a look in the archives,” Gabriel said, biting his bottom lip in thought.
