Free The Seer's Choice: A Novella of the Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney Page A

hallway in Mrs. Cardoza’s determined grip.

Chapter 4
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    Friday, 1 May 1903
    R AFAEL PINCHED his nose and rubbed at his tired eyes. He hadn’t fallen asleep until well past two in the morning, and he was going to feel that lack of sleep all day. But he’d placed a call to the Ferreira house that morning and talked with the butler, Cardenas, who assured him that Miss Jardim was perfectly safe. That helped.
    “What did he do to you?” Miguel Gaspar had taken a single look at his hand, but that was all Gaspar ever needed. He saw things. Not in the way that normal people did, but in a more complicated way. He could see the sum of a person’s gifts, of their actions.
    “What’s wrong with my hand?” Rafael asked. After Miss Jardim had touched it, the sharp stinging had ceased, but it still felt wrong .
    “It looks to me like he stole some of your hand from you.”
    Stole? “I had my hand on him, and he just disappeared. I assumed it’s some gift I’ve never heard of before.”
    Gaspar’s head tilted. “Do you mean he made himself unseen?”
    Gaspar’s wife could do that, simply make others not notice her. “It wasn’t that,” Rafael said. “I was holding him and suddenly he was gone. He didn’t pull away. He was just gone.”
    Gaspar leaned against the wall. “Are you saying he moved himself somewhere else by magic?”
    “I suppose that’s what he must have done.”
    “Fairies can move themselves through the faery realm, but from what I understand, it’s a complicated procedure and requires that doorways be in place to do so.”
    Rafael would point out that fairies didn’t exist, but Gaspar—and his wife—were very sure that they did. It was likely that Mrs. Gaspar’s father had been one of those mythical creatures. “I don’t think a doorway was used.”
    Gaspar scratched his chin. “Perrault wrote of boots that could transport the wearer seven leagues with a step, but I doubt we’re speaking of boots here, either. It could, however, be a magical device with a similar effect.”
    Rafael had thought of a magical device. The past fall, the Special Police had found dozens of unexplained devices when they’d raided a secret collection of magical oddities. Mrs. Gaspar recognized many of them as having belonged to her father before his disappearance, but the majority of them had unknown functions. The Jesuits had possession of most of those and were trying still to safely discern their uses. Despite his respect for that order’s brethren, Rafael suspected they’d taken on more than they could handle. “I didn’t see any device.”
    “It could have been as small as a talisman,” Gaspar said. “And he disappeared when the other police officer drew his gun?”
    “Yes.”
    “At the sight of an imminent threat, he triggers the device and he’s gone, taking a layer of your skin with him. You’d better not lay hands on him again, or he might take more of you than just skin.”
    “Why would he be after Miss Jardim? He was clearly trying to get past us to her.”
    “The more pertinent question was how he knew which room was hers that first time. You said her room looks down on the street. He could have seen her through the curtains at some point, I suppose, but a man who’s yelling gibberish doesn’t sound clever enough to reason out the internal layout of the house.”
    “I wondered that. I am concerned he might have a way to find her. Magically, I mean.”
    “Early to leap to that conclusion,” Gaspar said.
    Rafael frowned. Gaspar preferred evidence to supposition. “He looked familiar, too. Likely someone I’ve seen on the streets before. I couldn’t place his face, though.”
    Gaspar tilted his head, considering. “That doesn’t narrow our field of suspects. Is he going to strike again?”
    Rafael had asked his gift that, in a hundred different ways. “Yes, although not immediately.”
    “That buys us time,” Gaspar said. “Did you send out an updated description?”
    He