“If you truly want to shatter my illusions about Pelago,” Agnes said, “you’d let me see it for myself.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You know why,” Xavier said.
“Because it would look bad for you,” she grumbled.
“It would.”
“But you’re working with a Pelagan!”
“A man. And Kiernan has skills and assets that I need. You do not, and sending you to Pelago would be a mistake of epic proportions.”
“My mother would have wanted more for me than Ebenezer Grange,” Agnes insisted. “And she would have let me have some say in the decision at least!”
“Enough. You will do as you are told and there will be no more discussion of your mother.”
“Why not? Why can’t I know anything about her? What are you so afraid of?”
Agnes knew instantly that she had crossed a line. She felt something snap in the air between them.
“Go to your room.” Xavier’s voice was like iron, his face dark as a beet. A vein throbbed in his neck. “Now. No dinner. Go.”
She didn’t hesitate. She flew through the doors and up the stairs, past a bewildered Hattie, and nearly plowed into Swansea. She didn’t stop until she had collapsed onto her bed.
“So what’s the punishment? Miss Elderberry’s Finishing School again?” Leo was standing in her doorway, grinning. Agnes felt a stab of relief that her father had not told her brother she was engaged. When one of them was punished, it was a McLellan sibling tradition for the other to gloat. But this was different. This wasn’t time away from her lab or etiquette lessons or finishing school. This was the rest of her life.
“Honestly, I don’t know why he keeps sending you there,” he continued, oblivious. “Perhaps Larker Asylum would be a better fit. . . .”
“Go away, Leo.”
“Agnes . . .” He frowned and took a step into her room. “I’m—”
“What?” she snapped. “You’re sorry?” She snorted. “I can’t believe you just let Branson hit her like that.” She hadn’t meant to bring up Sera, but she found it was easier to be angry about that than to think about Ebenezer Grange.
“What was I supposed to do?” Leo said. “It’s not like I hit her myself.”
“No, you just snapped her up in a net, that’s much better.”
“If you remember correctly, you helped me find her.”
“I didn’t know she was there!”
“Neither did I!”
They stared each other down, and Leo must have seen something in her expression, because his eyes narrowed.
“What’s really going on?”
“Nothing,” she said. She could feel the tears welling up, and she tried to blink them away.
“Come on, you’re a terrible liar. What, is he padlocking your lab for the rest of the year?”
It pained Agnes to think that although Leo had been the one to suggest it, even he had not thought Xavier would marry her off quite so abruptly.
And just like that, she saw understanding click behind his eyes. The one thing that would make her this upset. The one punishment she would not want to joke about.
“Is it . . . are you en—”
“Don’t say it.” The tears were coming, she couldn’t stop them, and she had never let Leo see her cry before. “Please, just . . . leave me alone.”
“Agnes, I . . .” His arms twitched like he wanted to comfort her, and that made everything worse. She wrenched off her shoe and threw it at him, missing his head by inches and hitting the door instead.
“Get OUT!” she screamed. He cursed and vanished.
She got up, slammed the door shut, then went to her bed to retrieve the hidden photograph. Her mother’s face was blurred through her tears.
“Why did you have to leave me?” she demanded. “Why couldn’t you be here to protect me from him?”
Her mother only laughed. Agnes wiped her nose on her sleeve.
Engaged. It didn’t seem real. Tomorrow she would meet with Ebenezer Grange, the man who would be her husband. Her entire body rejected the idea.
She lifted her gaze to the book with the letter inside it and a steely determination set in. She was just as much a Byrne as she was a McLellan, goddamn it. What had Mrs. Phelps called her mother? Wild. Unconventional. Well, so was Agnes.
She grabbed the book off the table and headed to her lab. She would write this essay. She would book a ticket to Pelago and leave as soon as possible—Eneas would take her to the Seaport tomorrow without question. She would meet her grandmother and attend the interview with the university Masters and she would live her own damn life the way she wanted to.
She took the jar with Sera’s hair out from where she’d shoved it in the very back of her supply cupboard and carefully unscrewed it. She sterilized a set of tweezers, then laid the hair on a slide and put it under the microscope, turning the magnification to 10X. She peered through the scope and saw nothing more than a strand of blue hair. She increased the magnification to 20X, then 50X. The hair was the most perfect color blue she had ever seen—she’d called it cerulean before, but really it was much richer. Like a cloudless summer sky. She was so awestruck by the color that it took her a moment to realize something was missing.
Agnes increased the magnification to 100X and gasped. There were no ridges or overlapping scales on the cuticle to protect the cortex. This strand of hair was entirely smooth. That didn’t make sense. That wasn’t how hair worked. She took it off the slide and sliced it in half with a scalpel. Pinching it carefully with the tweezers, she held the cross section up under the scope.
The medulla, or the core of the hair, was nearly impossible to see—Agnes had tried when she studied her own hair, with dismal results. But in the center of Sera’s strand was a tiny light that pulsed like a star. She sat back and placed the hair on the slide again, rubbing her eyes. Hair was made of dead cells, but Sera’s hair seemed to be alive. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it was important. The Masters at the university would never have seen anything like it. She began to scribble in her journal, writing down her observations and thoughts, jotting down notes about how she might test its properties.
She felt a twinge of guilt that the hair had not held any answers that would help Sera return home, wherever that might be. But Agnes had her own prison to worry about. She bit her lip, hating that she could not be more helpful, loathing the idea of leaving the girl in her father’s clutches.
She worked until well past midnight, when she finally collapsed, exhausted, into bed and sank at once into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
16
Sera
WHEN SERA CAME TO, SHE FOUND HERSELF INSIDE A large crate with wide slats. There was a chain wrapped all the way around it, and no matter where she kicked or pushed, the wood refused to budge.
“Let me out of here!” she screamed. “Mother Sun, hear me! Help me, please!” She fell back against one of the slats, hot tears filling her eyes. No one answered her. The only sound was her labored breathing. Light was coming from the ground a few yards away, an odd purple-pink glow. Slowly, her eyes adjusted, and she was able to take stock of her surroundings.