The Whisper Witch Read online

  “It’s not Mrs. Liverpool, you beastly old man,” she returned cheerfully, turning sideways to fit through the door with her tray.

  “Penelope!” The room was small, with a cot along one wall, a table with two chairs, and a shelf for cups and crockery. The grate was packed with coals, blazing fire. The heat tickled at her throat, but Hamish lay on his bed under a thick blanket. “The daughter of the house, no less. And I’m not wearing shoes.” His toes peeked out from his blanket.

  “I’m sure I’ll survive the shock.” He pushed up on his elbows, shifting to try to stand up until she speared him with a look. “Don’t you dare.”

  “It’s not seemly.” He moved awkwardly, brittle as old paper.

  She ignored his protests. He’d sneaked her candies since she was old enough to chew them, taught her how to ride a horse, and even once let her take the reins of the carriage. He was as much her grandfather as he was Cedric’s. “You can prop yourself up to take this lovely cup of chocolate I’ve brought you.”

  “At this time of night.”

  “Exactly. I’ve gone through all this trouble, so you’ll drink it.” She picked up the cup to pass it to him. She wasn’t wearing gloves and she was tired; the combination sent a warning tickle behind her eyeballs. It was all the warning she got before she felt herself pulled in all directions.

  She didn’t have control over the memories or the order they came in. This time, she was the scullery maid washing the cup very late one night after a dinner party. Her hands were chapped from the hot water and the harsh soap and her feet hurt from standing all day. The smell of the leftover chocolate in the pot cut through the stink of onions and plates sticky with gravy and cheese sauce. She was hoping Cedric might notice her one day and pull her into the hay for a kiss.

  The cup bobbled in Penelope’s hand, spilling over. A drop of warm chocolate splashed onto her thumb, jerking her back into her own body.

  “You shouldn’t be serving me,” Hamish was saying.

  She just smiled wanly, until the room stopped spinning. He took the cup, his white hair stuck up at odd angles, like a rooster’s comb. He must have been lying down all evening, in too much pain to move. “You’ve put Cook’s tonic in here.”

  “I have. And I sacrificed a cup of perfectly good chocolate to do it.” She dragged a chair close to the bed and sat down, crossing her arms. “Drink it.”

  “It’s vile.”

  “But it will help with the pain.”

  “It makes me groggy.” He liked to bluster, but she could see the lines of pain etched around his mouth.

  “It’s nearly one in the morning. Were you planning on taking a turn through Hyde Park?”

  “Cheeky lass,” he muttered, but there was an approving twinkle in his eye. He lifted the cup and drank, grimacing lightly.

  “You can’t even taste it,” Penelope said.

  “What book has kept you up this time?” he asked. Penelope’s love of novels was legendary in the household. When she was ten years old, she’d run through the parlor in a sheet, pretending to be the ghost of a doomed maiden. She’d frightened some snobby lady with more pearls than humor so that she screamed and threw her plate in the air. The jellied custard had landed in her hair and Penelope’s doomed maiden had fallen over in a fit of giggles. Her mother had turned red, not with embarrassment but with the exertion of not laughing herself. After the guest left, Penelope’s mother showed her how to paint the edges of the sheet so that it looked even more eerie. She’d been a ghost that entire winter.

  “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” she told Hamish. “I’ve read it before but it’s so delicious. Listen to this.”

  She read to him until he nodded off to sleep, the empty cup balanced on his chest. She eased it off gently and pulled the blanket up under his chin. His breathing was easier. Pleased, she snuck back downstairs with her book, leaving the tray to be fetched in the morning.

  The moonlight gleamed softly on the dark windows of the house, on the copper urns in the garden by the door, and on the open front gates. The wind must have blown them open. She detoured down the lane to shut them.

  Ian came out of the shadows.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said just before clamping his hand over her mouth and hauling her into the carriage waiting at the curb.

  “Lady Emma!”

  “Oi, someone needs to shut him up.” Moira leaned against the black iron railing behind Emma, grinning. Her black hair fell in waves from under her crowned hat. She had a new cameo pinned to her coat.

  “Moira.” Emma grinned back.

  Virgil was swearing beneath them as he struggled to pull himself up the drainpipe. They both looked over the edge and sighed.

  “Go on, Pip,” Moira whispered to the little gargoyle hovering over her shoulder like a bat. “Give him something to really swear about.”

  “How did you even find me?” Emma asked Moira.

  “You’re on my rooftop, aren’t you? Madcaps always know.” She shrugged. “Besides, I was trailing that one. He looks dodgy.”

  “The dodgiest,” Emma agreed. “And a Keeper.”

  “As if I couldn’t tell that from here.” Moira snorted. “What are you doing up here anyway?”

  “I was investigating the portal we closed here.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  Moira’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “Didn’t I say debutantes are mad creatures?”

  Emma made a face but could not, in all honesty, protest. Instead, she called the mists back, tendrils snaking into the alleys and billowing around the gas lamps. Virgil became an indistinct outline with a tall hat making noises of panic. Magic flared and flickered in the fog around him.

  “Blimey, that’s a useful talent,” Moira said of the mists before leaping away to the print shop. “Quickly, off with you before he manages a tracking spell. There’s a ladder three shops down at the back corner.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Emma asked. It seemed wrong to saddle her friend with someone like Virgil.

  Moira looked vaguely insulted. “I can outrun a bleedin’ Greybeard, Emma.”

  “I know that. I only meant—”

  “Just run, you daft girl. And quit sending me your old gowns and silk shawls.”

  “But …”

  “I know you mean well, but even if I fenced that fancy stuff, someone would get suspicious eventually. I’d be hauled in front of a judge for stealing, make no mistake.”

  “That’s not fair.” Emma looked disgruntled. Moira just laughed, slightly incredulously. “Fine, no silk.” She was already thinking of what else she could do to help. A round of cheese would be good, wouldn’t it? Or new boots?

  “Run,” Moira repeated. She made a point of stomping loudly away. Virgil scrambled back down the ladder to follow her on foot.

  Emma went in the opposite direction, grinning. She grinned all the way back to the academy, up until she reached the gate only to be blocked entrance.

  By two Keepers.

  The Keepers slipped past the sleeping servants and her parents tucked into their beds, muffled in spells to keep them hidden. Gretchen’s mother, having renounced all magic, had no spells to deflect them. She slept on as Keepers dragged her daughter from her room.

  Gretchen managed to bite one, but she was outnumbered in the end. They wrapped her in a cloak and kept her arms and legs pinned so she wouldn’t do them harm. They dropped her into a carriage, slamming the door shut. Gretchen fought free of the constraining cloak, spitting curses. She kicked her captor hard enough to have him curse back in three languages. She lunged for the door with every intention of hurling herself out onto the road.

  “You’ll be trampled, you mad little hoyden.” Her captor grabbed her wrist. “It’s me. Tobias Lawless.”

  “That does not improve the situation,” she informed him between her teeth, just before she tried to kick him again. He was faster this time, and she only glanced the outside of his knee. He slammed his walking stick on the ground between them to
protect himself.

  “I’m a Keeper,” he reminded her.

  She tried to kick him again, on principle. Perhaps he really didn’t mean her any harm, but it seemed unlikely that he was in the habit of abducting debutantes. She paused in horror. Was he a fortune hunter under all that cold disdain? Had she read him wrongly this entire time? It wasn’t unheard of for girls to be kidnapped by fortune hunters and forced into marriage to avoid a scandal. “I won’t marry you.”

  He looked equally horrified. “I don’t recall asking.”

  “Why else are debutantes abducted in the middle of the night?”

  He shook his head. “I’m on business for the Order.”

  She ruthlessly squashed down the niggling hurt that he would turn on her like this. He was a Keeper. He was doing what was expected of him. It was ridiculous to think they’d shared a moment. That he’d saved her from the poppet spell for any reason other than the fact that he was a member of the Order. She settled back against the cushions. “I’ll scream.”

  “Go ahead. There are spells on the carriage.”

  She really needed to learn to channel her magic, if only to blast Tobias into next week with a fireball. And if there was no such thing as a fireball, she’d simply have to invent one.

  The light from the lantern swinging on a hook outside the window did little to help her read his expression. It was as haughty and cool as ever. “I don’t mean you any harm,” he added.

  It wasn’t him she was worried about.

  She’d heard all about the Order’s ship from Emma, but the reality was even more daunting. She was bundled into a rowboat, and the swinging lantern on the prow disoriented her further, showing glimpses of the black water of the Thames, a towering ship beyond, and three Keepers on the bench across from her, neither of whom would look at her. Only Tobias was brave enough to meet her withering gaze.

  “Very brave of you, to abduct a debutante from her bed,” she snapped. She’d never referred to herself as a debutante, preferring any other moniker, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  The answering silence was broken only by the splash of oars in the water. The rowboat gently bumped the hull of the ship as they came to a halt under a wooden ladder. Bottles were lined along the railing, each with a floating eyeball that watched her as she stood to grasp the lower rung of the ladder.

  She began to understand her mother’s refusal to have anything to do with the witching world, just a little bit.

  The deck gleamed, polished to a sheen under her slippers. From the rigging and the mast hung green glass balls, stuffed with bits of string, needles, flowers, and assorted spell ingredients. One rattled with teeth. More nervous than she cared to admit even to herself, Gretchen set a fearsome scowl on her face as she was nudged across the deck to the captain’s quarters. Gargoyles crouched over the door. Inside, candles burned in glass lanterns, casting just enough light to reveal both Emma and Penelope standing in the middle of the floor, inside a circle of salt and rowan berries. Gretchen was shoved into the circle beside them.

  Lord Mabon, head of the Order, and Daphne’s father, the First Legate, sat behind a desk secured to the floor with iron nails. They were stern-faced and imposing; men well used to being the most powerful in any room, both mundane and magical.

  Gretchen wanted desperately to prove them all wrong.

  Beside her, Penelope muttered Shakespearean sonnets under her breath. Emma was pale, fingers curled around her witch knot. It was black as ink. Until she’d forced the Sisters into a witch bottle, her mark had been the same faded-tea color as Gretchen’s and Penelope’s. Knots only darkened with the use of magic, and only the very old or very powerful had marks as dark as hers was now. Gretchen slipped her hand into Penelope’s, who did the same to Emma on her other side. They would take the Order on together, as they took on everything.

  “Just what is this about?” Gretchen demanded, trying to affect her mother’s most disdainful tone.

  “We will ask the questions here, Miss Thorn,” Lord Mabon said.

  She knew he deliberately called her Miss Thorn instead of Lady Gretchen, in an effort to subordinate her. There was a Keeper on either side of the door, and the lights of London beyond the impressive bow windows. Virgil stumbled inside, panting. “Beg your pardon, my lords.”

  Emma smiled smugly to herself. Gretchen resolved to ask her what awful thing she’d done to make Virgil that alarming shade of puce.

  “She was with a Madcap tonight,” Virgil accused her hotly, going so far as to point his finger at her like a trembling maiden in a farce.

  “She is a friend,” Emma replied.

  “Do you often meet your friends in the middle of the night on the rooftops?”

  “Where else may we be assured of privacy?”

  “What do you need privacy for, eh?”

  “Why, to talk about boys.” Her smile was sweet, with a touch of feigned innocence. It was remarkably difficult to look demure when one had antlers growing out of one’s head, but she managed a fair approximation. “Isn’t that the only thing girls talk about?”

  Since Virgil was the sort to believe it, he snapped his mouth shut, frowning.

  “Thank you, Virgil,” the First Legate said. “We will make a note of the infraction.” He stared coldly at Virgil until the younger man sputtered and left.

  “There’s nothing illegal about making friends with a Madcap,” Emma pointed out, frowning.

  “Keeping questionable company does not reflect well on you.”

  “Then I suggest you let us go,” Penelope said with a sickly sweet smile.

  The ship rolled gently from side to side. The strings of rowan berries and carved bone beads hanging from the star-painted ceiling clattered together. Lord Mabon gripped the side of his desk to keep his footing. Thunder rumbled, but it was distant and thin. Emma was shaking with the effort, sweat dampening her hair.

  Gretchen heard the discordant whispering as magic tried to do its work. Emma’s control of the weather wasn’t a spell; there were no ingredients to get wrong, so it shouldn’t wake the whispering in Gretchen’s head. She rubbed her ears.

  “Salt for meat, and salt for defeat.” Penelope murmured one of her mother’s strange rhymes. Gretchen kicked her foot through the ring of salt. Rain pelted the windows like pebbles. Lightning slashed the sky, stabbing at the silhouette of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

  But it wasn’t enough. The First Legate was already throwing three flat black stones on the ground around the salt circle, fixing the gap Gretchen had made. Silence slammed into her as the magical wards strengthened against them. The stones glittered like the eyes of feral beasts ready to devour them if they twitched a muscle.

  “Binding stones,” Lord Mabon explained tersely. “Emma Day, you worked strong Lacrimarium magic to bottle the Sisters recently,” he continued, as if she could ever forget it. “Magic far beyond your ken.”

  She wiped sweat from her temple before it could run into her eyes. “I suppose so.”

  “How, exactly, did you manage it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just assumed it would work since they were accidentally linked to me when I unintentionally opened the gates.”

  “Hmmm. Since that Lacrimarium was killed at Greymalkin House, you are now one of the very few people capable of that kind of magic.”

  Emma rubbed her palms nervously on her skirts. “But I’m not a Lacrimarium. I’m just a weather-witch.”

  “And yet you bottled three powerful warlocks.”

  “Is this your way of saying thank you?” Gretchen asked archly, despite the fact that she was trapped inside a magical circle. Or maybe because of it. The air was prickly, like wet wool, and it pressed close. “Because you might want to practice.”

  Lord Mabon’s mouth pressed into a thin, disapproving line. The First Legate raised an eyebrow. “You are impertinent.”

  “Frequently,” she agreed. If she could withstand her mother’s constant lecturing on deportment,
she could withstand a circle of salt and black stone.

  “You will be silent.”

  “I really doubt it.”

  “This is no laughing matter,” Lord Mabon snapped. “The only fully trained Lacrimarium in London died that night. Do you have any concept of how dangerous it is to be without one?”

  “Emma saved us all, or have you forgotten that?”

  “We have not. Nor have we forgotten that you managed to find a way inside the Greymalkin House, something the Order has not been able to do since before you were born. That is highly suspicious, wouldn’t you say?”

  Since it was, they said nothing at all.

  He glowered at Emma. “Since she disappeared, your mother’s spell on her own name has begun to fade. We now know she turned against her own father, a celebrated Keeper with the Order, before binding your powers and trapping her own familiar in a witch bottle. Why would she take such drastic measures, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma replied. Clearly not all of her mother’s spells had faded yet or they’d know it had all been done for Ewan Greenwood. “The spell drove her mad and she never spoke another rational word.”

  “That kind of history speaks against you.”

  “That’s Emma Day you’re speaking to,” Penelope pointed out. “Not Theodora Lovegrove Day. It’s easy to tell them apart if you try.”

  “That is past enough,” Lord Mabon snapped. “I have never encountered such defiant girls in my life.”

  Gretchen and Penelope beamed proudly at each other until Lord Mabon picked up a clay figure of a girl with a witch knot painted on her left palm and jet stones looped around her like a rosary on the Virgin Mary. He threw it into the circle, hard enough to smash it to pieces within the salt boundary.

  “I want to know what you’re hiding,” he said very evenly, the suppressed rage in his clipped tones more terrifying than any amount of yelling.

  “Nothing,” Gretchen replied. “We are hiding nothing.”

  The black stones heated like embers and glowed red.

  “Let’s try again. What are you hiding?”

  “No—” Gretchen broke off. She closed her mouth, opened it again. No sound emerged. She rubbed her throat, feeling panic nibble at her composure. Try as she might, her voice would not respond.