Chapter 1
Aurelie
Mondays were an excellent day for inventing.
After all, they were the first day of the week, and if one were to begin something new, one ought to start at the beginning. Like cracking open a fresh sketchbook or leaving the first footprint on new-fallen snow, there was something about a clean slate that made a young inventor feel alive.
Or at least, it held true for Aurelie. Her sample size was rather limited, considering she’d never met another inventor to ask.
Mondays were also the busiest days at Wisteria University, which meant that her uncle and dean of the college, Dr. Leopold Blake, was far less likely to drop by unannounced. Her best opportunity for unhindered innovation was always late at night, but even Aurelie needed sleep sometimes, and besides, daylight afforded far better visibility. Especially when she was working with fiddly little wires, as she was now.
But the very best thing about Mondays was that they were the day of rest for the kingdom’s Iron Guard, also known as demon hunters. And in Wisteria, where there were inventions, there were demons.
Fortunately, Aurelie wasn’t overly concerned about this specific invention. She’d been working on a prototype for months, and the subsequent demon had been small and weak, as they always were with undeveloped ideas. She wasn’t a risk-taker by nature, but whenit came to inventing, she believed the risk was worth the reward. Who could possibly fault Aurelie for solving one of life’s greatest difficulties with such a simple creation? Whowouldn’twant a long, telescoping metal arm to grasp items out of reach? Was there anyone at the university—indeed, in the world—who hadn’t stretched for the highest book in the library and found even the tallest ladder wanting?
Three rapid knocks sounded on the door, causing Aurelie to drop the delicate wire she’d bent into the shape of a lopsided question mark. Before she could respond, her best friend entered the room, a large red apple stuffed into her mouth like a pig at a banquet, a stack of old textbooks teetering in her arms. Aurelie wasn’t sure how she’d even managed to open the door, to be honest.
“What have I told you about waiting for permission to enter?” Aurelie scolded as Kiara dropped the books onto the overstuffed velvet sofa that served as a makeshift bed, though her tone was light. No one visited her down here besides Kiara and Uncle Leo, but she still felt a jolt of panic every time the door opened suddenly.
Taking a bite of her apple, Kiara tucked her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ears and grinned. “I think what you mean to say is,‘Thank you, Kiki, for being the world’s best friend and bringing me all the books I asked for.’?”
“Thank you, Kiki,” Aurelie singsonged, her torso now buried in a large wooden wardrobe while she rummaged for the beaker she needed for this afternoon’s experiment. She had already checked out her ten-book allotment for the month and often relied on Kiara to help fill in the gaps.
“What are you working on?” Kiara asked, crunching with deliberate vigor while she peered over Aurelie’s shoulder. “The grabby stick?”
Aurelie winced at the ever-infuriating sound of a person chewing and shot a wry look at Kiara. “It’s called the Helping Hand. And I’m currently preparing my new elixir to test on the moss we retrieved from the cemetery wall last month.”
The elixir in question was a clear, viscous fluid gathered from a rare variety of slug that Aurelie had obtained from the zoology department. She had condensed and purified it over the past week in a series of beakers to get it to the right consistency.
“That’s all well and good,” Kiara said, thumbing through one of the books she’d brought from the library, “but our shift starts in fifteen minutes.”
Aurelie glanced at the wall clock and groaned in despair. How was a girl supposed to work twenty hours a week as a bricoleur, tending to the needs of an old and crumbling university and its entitled student body; spend twenty more hours a week working toward her own degree; sleep the recommended eight hours a night; eat the sustenance required by the human body; maintain socially acceptable hygiene; and still find time to change the world?
She wasn’t supposed to, was the obvious answer. But that wouldn’t stop her from trying.
Replacing the elixir in the wardrobe with a weary sigh, Aurelie removed her apron, pulled on the dingy gray coat she used for her repair work, and followed Kiara out into the hall.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Kiara asked, just as Aurelie heard a pitiful mew from behind the closed door.
She hurried to open it, nearly squashing one of Mephisto’s eight legs in the process. The tiny dragon-like demon scuttled across the floor, its long nails clacking as it ran to its food bowl and blinked up at her with expectant red eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said, bending over to stroke one of its long eyebrows and nearly losing a finger to its sharp teeth in the process. “Ingrate,” she muttered as she placed a plump dead cockroach into Mephisto’s bowl, patting the demon’s head one last time before joining Kiara in the hall.
“Here,” Kiara said, handing Aurelie her own apple. She rarely ate breakfast—a waste of time, when there were always so many more important things to do—and would happily have survived on coffee until noon if it weren’t for Kiara. The apple wasn’t much, but it was portable, and that was a requirement for someone in perpetual motion.
Which reminded her of the paper she needed to write about the theoretical possibility of a perpetual-motion clock. Would it be so much to ask for twenty-fivehours in a day?
“Where to first?” Aurelie asked as she followed Kiara up the stairs into the main body of Easton Hall. Unlike her laboratory, which was dark and low-ceilinged in a way Aurelie had come to think of as cozy, the halls here were light and lofty, with enormous windows Aurelie had spent far too much time cleaning. The students wouldn’t arrive for another hour, but Aurelie tried to do as much work as she could before then. There was nothing worse than having to remove an ink stain from the carpet while some arrogant boy peered down at her as though she were his personal servant.
“Classroom 137. The gas lamps need topping up.”
Aurelie sighed. She knew there had to be a better way to light up the university—and the rest of Wisteria, for that matter—but that kind of inventing would produce demons far too large for Aurelie to contain by herself. Inventing was illegal on any scale, so she was forced to keep her creations, and their subsequent demons, as small as possible. If any escaped and came to the notice of the Iron Guard, Aurelie would face a lengthy prison sentence. Worse still, Uncle Leo might also be implicated.
After they finished filling the gas lamps with oil, Kiara and Aurelie went their separate ways. The daughter of the school groundskeeper, Kiara spent nearly as much time at Wisteria University as Aurelie did, though no one else lived on the premises. Uncle Leopold had his own house on campus, an old stone cottage dripping in the kingdom’s namesake flower. He still kept Aurelie’s room for her, all made up in pink ribbons and flouncy ruffles, the sort of room a childless bachelor might assume a young girl would like. But alas, Aurelie had never been a ruffles-and-ribbons kind of girl.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of classes, but Aurelie’s attention lay elsewhere. She was itching to get back to her lab and finish the Helping Hand. She hadn’t completed an invention in weeks, and beingthis closeto the finish line was exhilarating and maddening in equal measure.
By the time she returned to her laboratory at five o’clock, Aurelie was surviving on adrenaline and the remnants of a slice of pumpkin cake from another student. The cake was delicious, but she could have done without the girl’s observation that Aurelie looked “positively dreadful.” Passing in front of an ornate mirror,its gilded finish flaking away like autumn leaves, she grimaced at the shadows beneath her green eyes, brought out by the dim glow of the gas lamps. Her long hair was tied back in its usual braid, but wisps had broken free of their velvet ribbon, and there was a stain on her white collar that smelled suspiciously like coffee.