The next morning, my head felt much better.

At least by now, it felt like a mere needle plumbing in the depths of my grey matter to cause me pain. Still an agonizing feeling, but less than the chisel that had been attempting to split it in twain the day before.

I kept the curtains drawn, though. Light still hurt my eyes, and even the lantern I was currently using was only tolerable when kept outside of my view. Hopefully, this would fade as fast as the pain in my head. My errant thought about just permanently adjusting them to see in the dark shouldn’t come true because darkness was all I could tolerate.

Meanwhile, the pain in my head fading had brought something else back with it.

You are certain that is all that was said between you three? The Imp questioned me once again.

“For the fifth time, yes,” I replied irritably.

I sighed as I put on the bodice of the plain brown dress I’d picked out for the day. Tagashin had at least left me other clothes and restricted her prank to just dressing me in that frilly wrapper, which now sat at the very bottom of one of my drawers, hidden under as many other clothes as I could fit in there.

The Imp chewed on my answer for only a second less than it had the previous four times before speaking in my mind again.

You recounted it precisely as-

“Yes!” I snapped as I finished. “Or at least close enough that any differences should not matter!”

The Imp reawakening in the middle of my quiet supper up here had resulted in both a spilled bowl of soup and its awareness there had been a time where I’d been aware and it had not. It was reacting poorly to this idea and had been interrogating me about what had happened during that time, and not taking my answers well.

Infuriatingly, outside of my willingness to end my practice of Diabolism, I’d shared all details of my conversation with Voltar and Dawes. Unfortunately, the Imp seemed unwilling to believe in the secretiveness of the Empire’s Greatest Detective.

Voltar simply said he’d have them over for tea and spent the rest of the time discussing tea blends?

“Yes.”

Impossible. No one can spend two hours discussing tea!

I rolled my eyes. “People have different interests, sometimes they intersect and cause discussion. But yes, his refusal to discuss the subject more at the time was infuriating. Although he does have a good reason.”

He doesn’t trust you, the Imp observed.

“Of course he doesn’t. He’s returned to his home to find one he considered an enemy welcomed in without his permission. I’m astonished he’s being this lenient with me. And besides, the reason was waiting to have someone look at my head, which is much bet-”

I paused. A door had opened down below, and I could hear the tread of shoes heading towards the attic stairs. Far too loudly, each step echoing inside my head.

“Company,” I muttered. “Do me a favor and keep the commentary to a minimum for now?”

The Imp did not respond, which I would take as assent. There was a polite knock at the door.

“I’m decent,” I said. I was sitting on the side of the bed, standing up felt too unbalancing for right now.

The door opened, and Voltar came in, followed by a clean-shaven dwarf with a monocle lugging a suitcase almost as large as he was.

“Too dark,” the dwarf said irritably, moving over to the window.

Before I could even articulate a protest, he threw my curtains open and my world was nothing but pain and blinding light as I tried to find the safety of my covers.

“Halivik,” Voltar said chidingly. “I told you she likely has a concussion and you just open the curtains?”

“Can’t work in no light,” the Dwarf grumbled. “Apologies though. Gonna try to make this better. Assuming your brain doesn’t melt.”

“Oh,” I said from underneath what felt like my covers. “That sounds wonderful! What are you going to do to me?”

“Attach a device. See what part of the brain is most affected? Maybe tinker around and see if I can alleviate some symptoms.”

“Tinker around,” I repeated. “With my brain. I’m going to say no to that!”

“He’s used it before, Miss Harrow,” Voltar told me. “The incident described was years before now, and involved someone who was ver-”

“No,” I said firmly. “You can see what the extent of the injury is. You are not messing around with it.”

After a few more attempts to cajole me, I was back to sitting on the edge of the bed while Halivik attached something that weighed far too much onto my head. It fit awkwardly around my horns, the sounds of moving gears far too loud. Mumbling the entire time about how cellular degeneration rates from the machine weren’t too high, which did wonders for my confidence.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the light, and while they still watered, by the time he was done I could at least see.

“Dr. Dawes was correct in diagnosing coup-countercoup injuries,” Halivik said as he began unstrapping the device from my head. “She should recover over time. Nothing strenuous physically. Lots of bed rest. Unless she will let me adjust brain-”

Stolen story; please report.

“No,” I repeated as he put the device back in the suitcase, it resembling some nightmarish mixture of knight’s helm and torture device.

“Your loss. Call anytime, Mr. Voltar, as long as the money is good.”

“Bit of an odd bird,” I said a minute after the dwarf had left.

Voltar chuckled. “Think of what some of my associates say about you.”

Oh. True. But, since Mr. Voltar was already here and seemingly in a mood to talk, time to change the subject.

I cleared my throat.

“Mr. Voltar, you mentioned getting both Lord Montague and Lady Karsin over for tea? I’ll admit to being at a loss on how you mean to accomplish this.”

Lord Montague had already tired of Voltar, or Tagashin as Voltar, well before he probably assumed control of the Shape-changers. His desire to avoid Voltar would have only increased since then. Lady Karsin would be even less likely.

“A good question Miss Harrow. Let me ask you, how would you accomplish this?”

I frowned, not enthused by having my question flipped on me. A test? Curse that Kitsune for making me pay for a random comment of hers.

“I’m going to assume that threatening them or a loved one at gunpoint would not be ideal,” I said.

“Definitely not. Please, even in jest, such notions are impolite to suggest.”

I resisted the urge to snort. I had read several of the publicized accounts from Dawes of Voltar’s cases. Impolite to suggest too openly, maybe.

“When trying to entice people hostile to you, you arm the trap with something worth the risk,” I said. “Cheese for rats, but I imagine when scaling the concept to nobles, a very different cheese is required. Perhaps one of those fancy ones from Aarineau?”

“People,” Voltar corrected. “Nobles are ultimately people, with as wide of an array of thoughts and viewpoints. They certainly have one’s unique to their social grouping, but no different from any other. But you are on the right track. What do they want that we have to offer?”

“Our lives,” I said. “We are some of the few people who are actively looking into this. Taking us off the board rids them of the threat we offer. So we should probably expect shape-changers in their place. Well, a different one from Lady Karsin for her.”

“They won’t try to kill us,” Voltar replied. “Even if they were confident in our abilities to do so, there are much better times to try as such, and doing so would easily give away their complicity. Although Lord Montague already plays with fire by not trying to cut himself out of this game. Enough evidence has been left around of his complicity that even if he betrayed the shape-changers in such a way that made it appear he had no dealing with them, eyes will be on him for years, potentially decades, to follow.”

“That still leaves us with the issue of having nothing to bait our trap with,” I said. “Unless you somehow have gotten Tarry’s notes from the archives.”

Voltar chuckled. “Oh, I think my head would be soon destined to pike if I did anything like that. But we have something to pique their interest. Alice Skall.”

My lips pursed together, a protest about how we did not on the tip of my tongue, but I forced myself to think.

“You wouldn’t want me to sculpt myself into her,” I mused. “Or Katheryn Falara. They already suspect me of being her, assuming the younger Montagues kept it to themselves. Tagashin then?”

“Tagashin,” Voltar confirmed. “I wish to rattle their confidence. Having what they believe to be truth proven false should do nicely.”

“I’ve ‘died’ at least once so far, and whoever tipped them off about Malstein’s raid probably told them I went with him,” I countered. “They can probably guess we have someone with the ability to change shapes working alongside us.”

“Yes,” Voltar said. “They have to wonder who that might be, though.”

Ah. One piece fell into place.

“You mean to make them think Hawkins has turned on them?”

“Yes, or at least expand on a thought that must already have occurred to one of them,” Voltar confirmed. “I expect their minds will fill in what the worse possible results of that might be. And they’ll act accordingly.”

“Ah, so you mean to use my trap as well?” I said. “How relevant do you consider the bait, though?”

Voltar paused, thinking for a few seconds.

“It’s perhaps not the greatest piece in their plan, but it’s enough I think they’ll move on it. And it is a more violent trap than I would wish, but it’ll do. Shape-changers might be tricky to subdue. With Hawkins, you managed it, but not any others.”

I scowled. “I didn’t have as much choice as the others. But essentially, even a core of magic has its limits. They cannot store power, or manipulate its output, just simply generate it. The cores will vary in the amount, always within a certain range but ultimately limited. The shape changers themselves can store some, but it would be inefficient and limited. In Hawkins’ case, I exhausted his reserves and the amount of life energy his core generated, forcing it to save some minimal power for keeping him alive and ejecting him from the ruined shell. With the other two, I sent diabolic magic designed to degrade life into the cores themselves. With Hawkins I cut his tendons, with the other two I stabbed their hearts.”

“How difficult it is to cut tendons then?” Voltar said. “I’d prefer them alive instead of dead. We need more than the one alive.”

I frowned. “We have Hawkins. We have what I’d argue to be very good suspects for the masterminds behind this. Honestly, while I understand being cautious because they are nobility, I’d argue we’ve fingered the culprits well.”

Voltar grimaced. “One can never be certain, Miss Harrow. But besides that, we need exact numbers on the shape-changers in the city. Even one unaccounted for could be disastrous later on.”

True enough.

“I’m assuming you’ll want me there as well?” I asked. “As evidence that I am not Katheryn Falara?”

“Yes, but there’s something else that needs to be addressed first,” Voltar said, retrieving a letter from within his coat and passing it to me. “This arrived for you while you were unconscious. I didn’t mention it yesterday because you seemed in quite the state already.”

Frowning, I undid the seal and started reading. Halfway through, my blood felt like it was boiling, and by the end, it had cooled. Infuriating, but empty, threats. Phrased just the right way to make me feel an impotent anger I didn’t need to experience anymore.

I stared at the paper, eyeing the contents before looking at Voltar.

“You want me to handle this now?” I asked. “I thought things were frozen regarding this.”

“Frozen, yes, but unresolved. And unresolved matters have a case of coming back when they are least wanted.”

I sighed. I couldn’t deny that. And putting if off even longer would only result in this conversation becoming more difficult, not less. Mind you, I wanted to be in a better state for it, a light pounding still hammered at the foundations of my mind.

It was still a meeting I did not want to have. But sometimes wants met with reality and clashed. It was time to go see mother soon, anyway.

***

It was weird revisiting the hospital. People I knew acting like I was a stranger. The underlying fear and anxiety that had been there for Katheryn as well, but not to this extent. Was it because they’d grown used to Katheryn, or that the news about her being a secret diabolist had spread so far? They would know I was her associate, she’d been my appointee to check on my mother.

My mother lay in her bed, as unresponsive as she’d been these last eight years. I’d gripped her hand, the warmth the only sign besides the slight movement of her chest I was next to a living human and not a corpse.

I noticed when he entered the room, moving to the other side of the bed. I ignored him till he’d sat down, the chair creaking under his weight. I glanced up.

His face was drawn in a tight scowl. Oh, he was angry. Good, at least I had inspired some reaction from him besides paternalistic concern and scolding.

He seemed to wait for me to speak first. I was tempted to just wait and see if that cooled his anger, but it might stoke those fires instead.

Besides, I’d been putting this off for years now.

“Hello, Uncle Liu.”