Chapter 1

Prologue

Just like yesterday, there would be no customers today, either.

This was an absolute prophecy—no less than a certainty.

“Rose Taylor, you stupid idiot.”

In a small office furnished with nothing but a client couch and a desk, Rose sat curled up on her chair, muttering to herself.

Her soft brown hair, tinged with pink, had lost its shine and hung dry and lifeless. Her violet eyes, once sparkling like sweet violet candy, were now dulled by a deep melancholy.

“So this is what came of my big decision. What a joke.”

Her soliloquy, with no one around to hear it, was swallowed by the ambient noise seeping through the thin window.

If Mrs. Brown saw me sitting like this, she’d definitely start nagging again…

Two months ago.

Rose had fled from the capital, Romberton, to Linden and spent what little money she had left to open this office in the hopes of surviving.

The result had been disastrous.

It took a whole week after opening before her first and only client appeared—an elderly woman asking her to find a runaway pet. That pretty much summed it all up.

Even if a client did appear now, it would still be a problem.

Her magical energy was drying up in real time, and her recovery rate was abysmal; casting even a single spell could cost her her life.

Since that day, every choice she’d made had ended in regret, and her mood was sinking lower than the water table—through the floor, into the ground, deep underground.

When she forced herself to lift her head, the view through the glass looked like a grim reflection of her future.

Though fragrant spring had passed and summer sunshine approached, the sky above the industrial city of Linden remained perpetually gray.

Yesterday, today, and most likely tomorrow, the sky would be smothered in the same choking smog, and the pressure on her chest felt like a boulder settling right on top of her heart.

“I’m losing my mind!”

At last, Rose couldn’t hold it in and shouted at the top of her lungs.

“The business is a flop! I’m broke! There’s no chance of setting up shop in Romberton again! My magic is scraping the bottom of the barrel!”

Her future now had only two options: starve to death from lack of money, or dry up and die from magical depletion. It was quite literally a do-or-die situation.

Knock, knock, knock.

Just as her spiral of self-loathing was about to kick into high gear, someone knocked.

A knock?

She wondered if she’d imagined it.

But no—it wasn’t a hallucination. The door to her office, which hadn’t welcomed a single customer in over a month and a half, finally opened.

“Is this the Hampton Psychic Research Office?”

A refined accent, unmistakably from Romberton’s upper class.

She could tell from the voice alone.

This was a paying client.

“Yes! Welcome to the Hampton Office—specializing in psychic phenomena, supernatural research, and lectures!”

Rose shot up from her seat as if she’d been waiting all day.

“Come on in… please…”

Her enthusiastic greeting gradually shrank once she got a look at the visitor’s face.

A young man stood in the doorway.

He was a full head taller than most men. His broad shoulders and long, elegant legs exuded the dignity and presence of an ancient marble temple.

His finely tailored suit—clearly made from expensive fabric—hugged his muscular frame without a single flaw.

The pristine white deerskin gloves wrapped around his large hands were undoubtedly the highest quality.

And the ebony cane he carried likely cost more than all the money Rose had ever earned combined.

His dark blond hair was slicked back with pomade; his sharp nose and neatly arched brows framed piercing blue eyes that glinted with intellect and chill. His firmly set mouth radiated authority.

Rose knew exactly who he was.

In fact, she’d fled Romberton and run to Linden in the first place because of him.

For more than one reason.

“At last, I’ve found you, Miss Olga Blavatsky.”

It was a name she’d already discarded, but hearing it spoken aloud made her flinch as if he’d used her real one.

Rose began inching backward, her mind racing to figure out how to escape this situation.

James R. Dautryche.

Owner of the Dautryche Company, which supplied the royal family with the finest textiles and ran the kingdom’s most prestigious department store, Fellows. A rising railroad tycoon.

And…

“Oh ho ho… Mister, I think you must be mistaken. I’m not Olga Blavatsky.”

“Don’t lie. Do you have any idea how much money I spent to find you?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about…”

“Shouldn’t you take responsibility, Miss Olga Blavatsky the necromancer? Or should I call you Miss Alice Hampton, here?”

At the word “responsibility”, all the blood drained from Rose’s body.

“Re-responsibility?”

No way—it couldn’t be that, could it?

No. Impossible. There’s no way a regular person could figure it out.

Absolutely, positively no way an ordinary human could ever know about that.

Rose ignored the sting of her guilty conscience and continued to bluff, but the man simply smiled, one corner of his mouth lifting coolly.

“For daring to spend a night with James Dautryche.”

Oh no.

“And for daring to leave scribbles on my body and run away.”

Oh no, no, no. Dear god, no.