When the carriage stopped, Simkins got out first before helping Zan down. The rest of the household staff scrambled out behind her as she stood at the doorstep of 42 Warden Street. The jaunty townhouse in dove gray had been purchased by her maternal grandfather some half-century earlier. Back then, it had been fashionable for the upper class and wealthy merchants to live in or near the heart of Amanthus. Uncle Elliot and her mother Emily had inherited the house when they had turned eighteen—when their parents had perished in an influenza epidemic that had left nothing untouched, not any of the Islands and definitely not the Continent. To escape the aftermath of the disease’s ravage, Elliot and Emily took passage on The Meriden, a scientific vessel commissioned by the Queen to map the southern seas and the Far East.
And later, when Elliot came back to Amanthus without his sister, but with a five-year-old niece in tow, the townhouse had fallen into serious disrepair. Workers were hired to fix the place up, but it was simply not the same. Something nibbled at the edges, slowly wearing down the sparkle that had once been its newness. And it didn’t help that Warden Street was just one street over from Market Row—the shaky boundary that marked the slowly spreading decay of Old Amanthus from the rest of the city.
Despite the looming blackness of Old Amanthus, 42 Warden Street was home and Zan wouldn’t trade it for anything, even with her wet feet slowly turning to blocks of ice.
The driver cried out a “Yah!” and with a slap of the reigns, a pair of chestnut geldings rendered mauve in the mix of evening sky and glowing light of the gas lampposts sprung away in a clatter of hooves. Simkins unlocked the front door and as everyone piled inside the front foyer, she could still hear the rattling of the carriage wheels down the street with her keen ears.
Isadora made a tsking sound and gave Zan a kindly push towards the stairs. “First we have to get you out of those sopping clothes and into a hot bath,” the maid said as the butler struck a match and lit a lamp on a foyer table.
Boreas muttered something about dinner and tea and promptly took off towards the kitchen. Mrs. Philomon picked up a white square on the floor near the front door.
“Simkins, could you please put the urn in Uncle Elliot’s study?” said Zan as she put a numb foot on the first stair. “On top of the mantle, next to the ship in the bottle.”
“Yes, Miss Hu.”
The housekeeper waved the white square. “Miss Hu, this is a letter addressed to you. Should I put this on your escritoire?”
“Leave it on Uncle Elliot’s desk. I’ll be down shortly.”
Upstairs in her room, behind a plain wooden screen, Zan gratefully stripped off the black hat with the veil, the overcoat, the black dress, and the wet petticoats. Then came the corset, the chemise, and the pins in her hair. Everything went into a pile on the other side of the screen despite Isadora’s complaint at her carelessness. She looked down at her pale feet, toenails with a faint blush of blue. She wiggled her toes and felt her muscles sting. Grimacing, she pulled on a white satin robe and stepped out from behind the screen and slipped into the adjoining bathroom.
Steaming water greeted her. The maid had already started running the bathtub and had liberally sprinkled lavender into the water. Zan wrinkled her nose at the strong smell and made a mental note to tell Isadora to leave off scenting bathwater until she could tell the difference between a spoonful and a bottleful.
* * *
After the bath that had finally put some feeling back into her feet, Zan donned a plain gray woolen gown and the satin robe and headed to her uncle’s study. Her slippered feet made no sound as she made her way down the stairs and down the hallway. The door to the study made no sound as she closed it behind her.
Simkins had already prepared a fire. Zan stood in front of the flames of the hearth, but had only eyes for the objects on the mantelpiece. The butler had put Uncle Elliot’s cremation urn on it as she had requested, on the corner beside the glass bottle lying on its side on an ebony stand. Inside the bottle was a miniature copy of the sleek clipper with its proud sails—The Meriden. Next to the bottle was an ormolu clock that Zan had taken apart when she was fifteen. Instead of flying into a rage when he had discovered her in her room with clock parts strewn all over her bed, he had taken the time to explain to her all the parts of the machine and showed her how to put it back together. And it still worked, same as before.
On the other side of the clock were several small photographs in wrought iron frames decorated in scrolls and flourishes. The black and white photographs were in fact miniature portraits. One was of her parents. Emily Waterstone sat on a chair wearing a traditional cheongsam decorated with tiny cherry blossoms. Her light hair was pulled back into a severe bun, but her eyes twinkled and a mysterious smile lifted her mouth. Whenever Zan looked into the mirror, she could see the shadow of her mother’s face, pixie-like, almost delicate. A dark haired man stood behind her mother, his almond-shaped eyes looking solemnly at the photographer. But despite the strong stamp of Far East in his features, her father was wearing a western suit complete with waistcoat and cravat. And it was obvious that her coloring had come from Cai Hu.
Uncle Elliot had once told her that the photograph had been taken about a month before the accident.
Zan felt pressure behind her eyes and forcibly, she turned her head away from the photographs. She knew what the others were—one was of herself, looking decidedly uncomfortable in the striped dress that Mrs. Philomon had forced on her on her twentieth birthday. There were two with Uncle Elliot. One was of her uncle in front of the steps of the Far East Embassy shaking hands with his childhood friend, Peter Caradon, Queen’s ambassador and Earl of Gasmere. The other was of Uncle Elliot standing triumphantly next to one of his earlier inventions—light hair mused from several days of frustrated finger raking and the elfin face that he shared with his sister and niece widely grinning in triumph.
She moved to the sideboard on the opposite wall of a bookcase and a desk made of cedar and pine. She poured herself a generous helping of brandy from a crystal decanter and downed a hefty gulp. The warm burn of her throat helped her focus on herself and the sluggish energy stirring about the room. It was then that she noticed the envelope.
Putting her glass down, she ambled to the desk and picked up the envelope and a letter opener. With a quick flick of her wrist, the envelope’s edge gave way and she fished out official Museum stationary.
After reading the letter, she crumpled the paper in her fist.
How dare they!
She snarled, but forcibly restrained herself from chucking the offensive stationary into the fire. Instead, she tossed the ball of paper onto the desk and glared at it as her fingers dug into her palms. The sluggish energy absorbed her sudden anger and pulsed, gathering about her feet.
How dare they demand my uncle’s research, she fumed. The machines and the inventions had been his pride and joy when he had been alive and now some fussy officials at some stuffy institute demanded that she hand them over the next afternoon so they could put it in a dark corner of the Museum archives to collect dust. Didn’t they understand that those contraptions were all that she had left of him?
Her palms began to sting and she looked down to see that her fingers and hands had grown dark hair and had changed. Her control was in danger of completely slipping. She strode back towards the fireplace and crouched next to the grill. She felt the brush of a tail along her legs underneath her gown. A growl began at the back of her throat as her nose sharpened, detecting the scent of cook’s dinner. Her hearing sharpened and she could hear the murmurs of the household staff down the hall, the skittering of rodents just outside the study window, the creak of the house’s floorboards. Her gown became almost unbearable against her skin.
A knock at the study door startled her just as her vision began leeching of color and clarity—into an animal dichromism. The knock broke into that overwhelming tide of animal instinct and the human part of her gained her footing again and began pulling on that energy. The flames seeped back from gray to brilliant red, yellow, and orange. The touch of the tail vanished. Her paws became hands.
“Miss Hu,” came Mrs. Philomon’s voice on the other side of the door. “Are you all right? Boreas has prepared supper. And a restorative herbal tea. Will you be taking it in the study or in your rooms?”
Her voice felt scratchy as she replied, “I’ll have it in the kitchen, Mrs. Philomon. Thank you.”
