Free The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) by Kate McIntyre Page B

through the waters again. Chris and Olivia followed.
    “They couldn’t
actually
have gathered everyone so quickly, could they?” Chris murmured to Olivia.
    She shot him one of her little grins. “Oh, never underestimate people who are curious, Christopher. I suspect they all came running full tilt to us.”
    The Crone stopped before a door. “Here we are,” she said.
    Inside was a large, well-appointed meeting room, and despite Chris’s doubts, there were four entire family units, minus one Mother who was attending the sanctuary.
    Immediately, Chris opened his book and began making notes. He noted how one of the Youths, tiny with tightly curled orange hair, cringed away from them as they entered. He noted how the Maiden beside him put her arm around his shoulder and murmured something in his ear. He noted how one pair of Maidens and Youths sat almost indecently close together, fingers intertwined. He noted Sister Elisabeth, sitting near the back in a corner, apart from her family, face swollen from tears.
    And then he noted that there were seven young people in the room.
    Olivia had realized it faster than he had. “Aren’t three of you supposed to be dead?” she asked, folding her arms.
    Twenty-two pairs of eyes blinked at her in confusion.
    Olivia pulled the rolled newspapers out of her reticule and pulled off the twine, snapping them open. “All right,” she pronounced. “Which of you are from the Sanctum of the Father’s Sheltering Arms?” She pronounced the name with slight distaste, like there was something too salty on her tongue. A series of hands went up, one for each position. Olivia’s gaze zeroed in on the Maiden, the girl who’d wrapped her arm around the cowering ginger Youth. “I take it you’re
not
the dearly departed Georgiana Edison. Who am I looking at, then?” she asked.
    The girl glanced around. When no help was immediately offered, she licked her lips and spoke up. “Penny Daniels, ma’am,” she said, and then, as if remembering herself, straightened a bit. “That is, I am Sister Penelope of the Holy Family of the Sanctum of the Father’s Sheltering Arms, Miss Faraday. What can I do for you?”
    “How long have you held that position?”
    “Four weeks, ma’am.”
    Chris glanced up, looking over at Olivia, who was wearing her thinking line between her brows. “Georgiana Edison died four weeks ago,” Olivia pointed out, as if the room didn’t know. “She was the Maiden of your church.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “And you’ve been the Maiden of your church for four weeks?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Olivia looked around the room. “All right,” she said, clearly bemused. “Is it just me, now, or is that a
ludicrously
fast turnover?”
    One of the Crones spoke up. She was a wizened old thing, and Chris would put her age at past eighty, at least. Despite how her mouth trembled as she spoke, and how her hands looked like sticks wrapped in birch bark in her lap, her eyes were sharp and flinty. “Do you know where we come from, Miss Faraday?” she asked. Her voice was like someone slowly folding old paper.
    Chris knew Olivia well enough to see her swallow a smile. “Oh, what a question,” she mused, miming a philosophical pose: one finger on her cheek, head tilted, brow furrowed. “I suppose you would say that we were created by the hands of the Three and Three, though some Lowry folk have differing opinions, and―”
    The old woman continued to speak, not raising her voice over Olivia’s playful baiting. “In the old days, before Richard Lowry, priests were third and fourth sons. Daughters who didn’t want political marriages, or didn’t have enough dowry to make them. We were people who had no other place to go.” She cracked a smile and her eyes glittered. “Well, that much hasn’t changed. We’re still outcasts needing a place. Except now, it’s not about inheritance, politics, or marriages. It’s about proficiencies.”
    Olivia had given up her attempt to rile