Dangerous Thoughts

Chapter 27

When Charles finally came to, the first person he saw was a little boy.

He was carrying a pitcher, hands shaking from the weight as he poured water into a glass on a nightstand. As soon as he realized Charles was looking at him, the boy's brown eyes widened as if he had seen a ghost, and he raced out of the room, spilling water all over himself in the process. "Mister James! Mister James!" Charles heard him shout down the hallway. "He's awake!"

James appeared a moment later, all tousled blond hair and wide worried eyes. "Charles!" he cried. "How are you feeling? How's your head?"

"Head's fine," Charles mumbled, looking around the room. He was in his bed, he realized, back home. "Body feels like it was trampled by a fleet of horses."

"That's likely from the reaction potion you took. It really takes a toll on the muscles, but that should get better in a few days."

"And my skin feels like it's on fire." Charles looked down. He was naked from the waist up, and he was startled to see a  strange pink pattern etched into the skin of his right arm. It reminded him of the branching lines of a tree.

"Lichtenberg figure," James explained. "It happens to those struck by lightning. It's already fading—should be gone by tomorrow. Your hands though..."

As he trailed off, Charles finally noticed that both of his hands were bound in thick white cloths. And of all the parts of him that hurt, his hands stung the worse.

"After Juliette struck you, the book burst into flame and burned your hands," James said. "I got to them as fast as I could, but the burns were fairly deep." He winced. "You'll likely have scars after all of this. Might have some trouble moving a finger or two."

"Well, good thing I'm not a piano player," Charles mumbled, trying to piece everything together. His memory was surprisingly foggy. "What do you mean 'after Juliette struck me.' Why did she do that?"

James blinked. "You don't remember?"

Charles shook his head. "Just flashes of things: Lillian almost getting her throat slit, fighting Monroe, you and Juliette coming to the rescue... Nothing much after that."

"You grabbed Monroe's spell book and it looked like... it looked like it corrupted your mind. You wouldn't listen to us. And then you started reading from it and we had to stop you before..."

Before I did something incredibly stupid, Charles finished silently, remembering the dark whispers of the book.

"The authorities arrived pretty quickly after that—Lillian went with Andrew to get them. But I stayed behind with Juliette because... because Cecilia..."

He trailed off, and suddenly the last few memories came rushing back to Charles: Monroe slapping his daughter across the face, Cecilia lunging at him to save Lillian, and then that horrible moment Monroe's knife had dug into her abdomen and she had collapsed in a pool of blood.

And then Charles noticed that James was wearing an all-black suit. James, who eschewed the dreadful color every chance he got, opting for green velvet and deep maroon and elaborately embroidered suits from Mister Morgan's shop, was now wearing all black. The color of mourning.

"Where is she?" Charles demanded.

"Charles, please calm down—"

"Where is she?" Charles shouted, his voice rising in pitch as his heart pounded wildly.

"My chambers—"

With an energy that Charles didn't know he possessed, he leapt out of bed and raced down the hallway towards James' room, despite James yelling at him to stop. Please be okay. Please be okay! he thought fervently as he ran.