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that man.”
    “The snake is back inside the horse,” Nell said. “We need to seal it up in something until Lord Drood can do something about it.”
    “I have a metal cashbox,” Amy said. “We could seal the seams with wax, once it’s inside.”
    Nell nodded. “And don’t touch it when you’re putting it in. I think touching it is what lets the spirit out.”
    “Nell, is your mother all right?” Kendall looked out the window to where Caro watched them through the glass. “Can you be sure the serpent didn’t hurt her or…”
    “The new baby? No. The serpent bites, and it hadn’t yet. I think…maybe it seeks out the most vulnerable person within reach. It circles them, like you saw in the photos and then it sinks in its fangs. It had started to circle Mum’s middle and was rearing up like it was about to bite when I threw it. It was angry, as if it hadn’t finished what it wanted to do.” She swallowed convulsively.
    “Miss Eleanor Hadrian, you can watch my back anytime.” Kendall patted the girl’s shoulder. “Now perhaps we should go to your mum, make sure she’s all right.”
    Caroline sat on a bench in Mrs. Bennett’s small garden, pale but steady.
    “I’m fine.” She pointed back at the studio. “Now go do what needs to be done.”
    Back inside, Amy ran to fetch her cashbox, dumping the change still inside into a heap on her desk. She grabbed a candle and some matches and laid the open box on the floor beside the horse. “Should we check the other toys?”
    Kendall nodded. “I’ll handle them. Nell, the first sight of anything coming out, you let me know, all right?”
    One by one, he lifted the other half-dozen toys, but each time Nell shook her head.
    “Fine,” Kendall said. “Let’s seal this thing up.” He used his walking stick to slide the toy into the box, and then to close the lid. Amy lit the candle and began dribbling wax over the lock.
    “Amy, you have a safe, right? Let’s stash this thing in there until your uncle can get here.” He hooked his walking stick handle through the handle on the cashbox and lifted it like that, carrying it into the back of the workroom where Amy kept her small fireproof safe.
    Once the heavy lead door was locked, Kendall and Amy went back outside to join Caro.
    “We hadn’t even told the children about the new one yet,” Caro confided as they walked back toward the house. “But Jamie, bless him, has visions, and apparently he told the others, or Nell wouldn’t have known. Keeping secrets in a family like this is next to impossible. Life is never dull around the Order, but it’s good to be even an indirect part of something that does so much good.”
    “I’m sure it is,” Amy agreed.
    Caro paused and turned to face Amy directly, putting a gap between them and the others. “Kendall’s a fine man. Even if he wasn’t wealthy or titled, a girl could do much worse.”
    “But he can do far, far better.” Amy held out her hands, nails chipped, fingers stained with developing chemicals. “Can you see these as the hands of a duchess? While I may have the pedigree, I don’t have the temperament to live in his world. I’m a photographer, nothing more.”
    Caro laughed gently. “And I was a bastard-born governess. Yet here I am. Lord Drood is a powerful man within the Order, who can open a lot of doors, and Kendall’s parents carry a lot of weight in society, his grandmother even more. If you care about Kendall, don’t give up too easily. The families within the Order get away with a certain degree of eccentricity.”
    “I only met him yesterday.” Though that didn’t really matter. It had been the same for her parents and her grandparents. Love at first sight was a Deland family tradition.
    “Sometimes a day is all it takes.”
    Kendall paused at the door to the house and waited for the women. “I don’t think you should go inside until we’ve apprehended Peterson.”
    “Can you really arrest a man for making possessed toys?