The Whisper Witch Read online

“Blast.”

  Ian returned with their wineglasses before she could find Lucius. Unfortunately, he also returned with Tobias. “Apparently there was a snake in the ballroom earlier,” Ian told them. “Everyone is flying into the boughs over it.”

  Tobias frowned. “That is rather unusual.”

  “Probably came in from the gardens,” Penelope said airily. “You know how dramatic everyone gets. You’re not afraid to waltz, are you, my lord?” she asked as the orchestra began to play again.

  “Snakes and all?” Ian bowed with a smile. Penelope glanced at Gretchen and Tobias.

  “You should dance too,” she suggested archly. “So no one suspects why you’re really here, Lord Killingsworth.”

  Gretchen widened her eyes threateningly at her cousin. She was clearly reading too many gothic romances and Keats and those other poets. It was rotting her brain. Didn’t she realize that Gretchen didn’t want to dance with Tobias? She wanted to kick him.

  He appeared to feel the same way, if his stiff posture was any judge.

  “I’m sure Lord Killingsworth can spy on me just as well from over there,” she said.

  “And yet why waste a perfectly good waltz?” he returned, holding out his arm in invitation. She saw the dare reflected in the arch of his eyebrow. He didn’t think she’d accept. Her hand settled on his arm, slapping down as though to swat an irritating fly.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” she said, cheerful despite herself. She refused to let the Order steal her sense of humor away completely. “You’ve punished us both by daring me to accept.”

  “It’s an honor, I assure you.”

  The buzzing began almost before he’d started speaking. She smiled at him wryly. “It’s no use lying to a Whisperer,” she said as he led her to the dance floor. “Surely you must know that.”

  “I …” He looked surprised and, possibly, chagrined. She must have imagined that. Still, she’d flustered him, and it was the most emotion she’d ever seen on his perfect face. He finally looked nineteen instead of ninety.

  The music swelled around them, violins and pianoforte braiding together seamlessly. She felt nervous for no good reason, especially when his arm went around her waist, drawing her closer. His eyes, the hard blue of a winter sky, met hers. She thought she heard a wolf howl. She swallowed, suddenly terrified that she was going to start babbling.

  The music seemed to get louder but everything else faded. She was acutely aware of the light pressure of his hand on her lower back and his fingers clasped around hers. The candles in the chandelier overhead dripped beeswax, but he steered them effortlessly around it. She’d never really understood the fuss people made over the waltz. But now she was afraid she understood it a little bit better.

  And then, because nothing seemed to go smoothly in the witching world, a dull ache built inside her chest. It wasn’t the kind of swoony feeling Penelope talked about. It was more like her wolf-hound’s teeth gnawing on her ribs. She flinched when her witch knot flared briefly, as if traced by an invisible dagger. She was surprised she wasn’t bleeding through her white gloves.

  She was even more surprised when Tobias whirled her away from the others to press her against the wall.

  Moira had just finished stealing mandrake roots from a witch’s back garden when she ran into Maddoc. “What are you doing out and about?” he asked.

  “The usual,” Moira said. “You?”

  “Heard Rovers found a body in the Thames and wanted to sell the bones.”

  She froze, thinking of Strawberry. “And did they?”

  Maddoc shook his head. “Near as I could tell they were dog bones.”

  Moira released her breath. She couldn’t bear the thought of her friend being used for foul magic.

  “Still,” Maddoc continued. “I thought I smelled lemon balm and black magic. Best stick together tonight.” He nodded around the corner to a narrow alley that stank of cats and gin. “We’re up there.”

  They ducked into the crooked lane where a ladder was set against the wall, behind a stack of broken barrels. The last three rungs were rotted through, but the rest was sturdy enough. No one ever looked back here, or at least no one sober enough to take notice.

  Moira followed Maddoc up to the roof, climbing nimbly over the railing. She straightened just as a posy of purple-and-white violets hurtled at her face. She snatched it out of the air before the petals went up her nose.

  “Some bloke left those for you,” Cass said, pouting slightly. She was wearing her usual lavender-and-black dress, but she’d taken off her veils. She never did like to share the attention, especially when it came to the other lads. She and Moira only tolerated each other because Moira couldn’t have cared less about the lads and because Cass knew they needed each other. It was tricky enough being a Madcap, never mind a girl alone in London.

  Moira frowned at the posy, wrapped tight with a fluttering ribbon. Cass would want to weave it into her hair. Moira just wanted to know if she could sell it at the markets. “Who the hell would bring me flowers?”

  Cass sniffed. “Exactly my question.”

  “Easy,” Maddoc said lightly, before he had to separate them. He’d learned the hard way just how quickly a comment could escalate to bruises and black eyes. Penn sighed, disgusted with Maddoc. He enjoyed the fights. Moira tossed the posy aside, making sure to clip Penn in the ear with it. She opened her mouth to make a snide remark, then snapped it shut again frowning. The bottoms of her feet prickled a warning, her boots filled with invisible needles. There was the sound of stone on stone and paper tearing.

  They turned in unison, just as the enormous gargoyle hunched over the dormer window of the bookshop next door pushed off its perch. It was the gray of autumn storm clouds, roiling with power. It veered clumsily as it animated from stone to magical creature. Its talons raked the shingles, smashing them to bits. It dipped lower, swiping at Moira. She dropped down instantly, already feeling a gash bleeding under her hair.

  “What’s got him riled?” She cursed, rolling out of the way when a wing point pierced the shingles beside her head. “We aren’t even on his roof!” Gargoyles only woke for one reason: magic.

  “I told you something was off,” Maddoc said as it swiped at Cass, who dove behind Penn, her sense of self-preservation more accurate than any of her predictions. Nigel crouched beside the smoking chimney pot. He rolled an apothecary bottle filled with whiskey and pigeon and bat bones toward Moira. She caught it before it hurtled over the edge or smashed against the railing.

  She uncorked it and tossed a few drops in the air, splattering the gargoyle’s wing and underbelly. It was better if you could get the whiskey onto the talons or the tongue, but she was trying not to get stabbed with stray bits of rock or chomped by stone teeth. “What the hell’s this one called?” she panted, rolling out of the way again. She had to wait for Penn to distract the gargoyle in order to regain her feet.

  “It’s new,” Nigel called out. Since the gargoyles had fled London, the Greybeards had been fetching them back from parts unknown. But it wasn’t just the Order; anyone with even a drop of witch blood now had gargoyles somewhere on his or her property. It was getting difficult to keep up. “No one’s named it yet.”

  “Well, that’s just great.” Names had power, and giving gargoyles their own names was part of the magic that gave the Madcaps their uncanny ability to control them. A gargoyle without a name would turn against any magic, even if it wasn’t a warlock’s doing.

  “We need to tame this one. Give me a name!”

  “Tristan,” Cass suggested. Tristan and his love, Isolde, were parted and died forlorn. Trust her to come up with something suitably tragic.

  Moira didn’t have time to argue. “Tether it!” she shouted.

  Nigel scuttled forward and drew a symbol on the shingles with a piece of chalk he fished out of his pocket. It looked like tree branches. Maddoc pulled a stone with a matching symbol from his pack and tossed it up into the air, just as the gargoyle flew ove
r them again, preparing to dive. The stone went over its head, in perfect alignment with the chalk symbol. Both sigils flared and the gargoyle stopped in midflight, yanked to a standstill by invisible hands. It flapped its wide, leathery wings slowly and made a rumbling sound.

  Moira scrawled the name “Tristan” on a scrap of parchment with the nub of a pencil. No Madcap was ever without the basic gargoyle-taming ingredients; She rolled the paper into a miniature scroll around a clutch of bat and pigeon bones and soaked it all with the whiskey. She tossed it into the air, infused with magic. The gargoyle, following instinct, snapped at the bundle, swallowing it whole.

  “Tristan I name you,” Moira said. “By the name Tristan I command you!” She scuffed the chalk symbol with the toe of her boot and the gargoyle lowered slowly, released. “Stand down, Tristan,” she ordered wearily. The gargoyle returned to its original perch, body hardening to stone.

  “Well, that was fun,” she added, pushing her hair off her face. “I wonder … ,” she trailed off, sniffing the air.

  Maddoc reached for his dagger. “What is it now?”

  She shook her head and shot him a self-deprecating smile. “I thought I smelled strawberries. Never mind. I’m going daft.”

  “No, you’re right,” Nigel said, crouching by the chimney pot. He picked up the broken bowl of strawberries he’d been carefully rubbing free of dirt.

  “I found them in Covent Garden,” Penn explained proudly, knowing how much Cass loved strawberries.

  “Stole them you mean.”

  He shrugged. “Same thing.”

  “If they catch you, you’ll hang for stealing,” Cass said in her singsong voice, the one she used for prophecies and predictions. She fancied herself a prophetess, but only dealt in gloomy, blood-filled predictions. The others ignored her, except for Penn, who was still trying to convince her to let him kiss her. She was smiling, as smug as a cat. She had strawberries, a boy who wanted to kiss her, and the promise of dire consequences. Moira knew the other girl was as happy as she could be, barring some wealthy bloke to shower her with presents.

  “I’m going to check on Joe,” Moira decided. There was still too much magic searing the air, and she knew if she stayed she and Cass would snipe at each other all night.

  “You should,” Cass agreed, nibbling on a strawberry. “I sense he’s not got long now.”

  “Oh, shut it,” Moira snapped, fed up with the other girl’s fortune-telling.

  Cass narrowed her eyes. “I have a gift,” she said loftily.

  “You have a big mouth.”

  Maddoc sighed. “Cass, hush. Moira, go on.”

  “Why do you always take her side!” Moira heard Cass shout as she leaped to the next building and the next, losing herself in the familiar feel of shingles underfoot, gas lamps in the fog, and the knowledge that no one could reach her up on the rooftops.

  Gretchen’s back hit the flowered wallpaper as Tobias shielded her with his body. His shoulders blocked most of her view. She tapped one. “Excuse me, have you lost your mind?”

  But her body recognized danger: rapid heartbeat, the roar of blood in her ears, and breaths like tiny caged hummingbirds.

  “You feel it, don’t you?” he asked, his jawline uncompromising as he surveyed the ballroom.

  “I feel something,” she agreed, rubbing her breastbone as though it were her wolfhound’s furry head. She smelled lemon balm and yawned widely. She leaned her head back, suddenly too exhausted to stand up properly.

  Tobias cursed, turning around. He grabbed her shoulders, squeezing hard. “Don’t you fall asleep on me.”

  “What? Why … should I …”—another yawn, bigger than the first—“do that?”

  And yet she was struggling to keep her eyes open. She wondered if someone had slipped laudanum in the wine. An elderly chaperone sitting in one of the chairs set up along one side of the room, tilted right over, snoring loudly. At least Gretchen thought that’s what she saw; she couldn’t be entirely sure since her eyelids seemed suck at half-mast. They may as well have been cathedral stones for all she could lift them.

  Tobias tugged a pendant out of his pocket and slipped it around her neck. The silver chain was unbearably icy, like a winter pond closing around her. But the sudden cold popped her eyes open and dissolved the iron in her bones. The pendant appeared to be made from rose thorns and the teeth of some kind of small carnivore, all wrapped in black thread. It pulsed gently, glittering faintly. “What is this?” she asked.

  “Shield charm,” he explained. “It will protect you.”

  “From what, exactly?”

  “Magic,” he replied grimly.

  The witches in the crowd paused, champagne flutes halfway to their lips, or else stumbled over a dance step. A woman scattered salt from her reticule.

  The guests began to crumple like discarded paper. Men dropped suddenly. A footman’s tray crashed to the ground, glasses shattering. The violinist fell asleep on his stool even as the music from his last-plucked string warbled in the now-silent room. Chatter faded away, laughter died. Ladies fluttered and fell over, flowers wilting on stems. Gretchen’s own mother sat down, looking unwell.

  Alarmed, Gretchen hurried forward to her mother. She was pale as glass, but her pulse throbbed under her pale skin. “She’s asleep,” Gretchen said, stunned.

  Hundreds of guests had simply toppled over, asleep before they hit the floor.

  “Did the Order do this?” she asked.

  “No,” Tobias replied tightly.

  “Are you sure?” She pulled a very small iron dagger from the strap above her knee.

  “Be careful with that,” he added.

  “Believe me, if I stab you with it, it won’t be an accident,” she muttered.

  “A comfort, I’m sure.”

  Gretchen picked her way among the bodies, clutching the shield charm tightly with her free hand. The icy prickles it shot through her witch knot were reassuring. “Where’s Penelope?” Gretchen asked, not seeing her cousin’s distinctive flower-strewn gown among the fallen guests. The quality of the silence in such a crowded room was unnerving.

  “She has a Keeper to protect her,” Tobias pointed out.

  She bit her tongue on a sarcastic reply. He was her Keeper after all, and she’d be unconscious like the others if he hadn’t helped her. She scanned face after face, dread souring in her belly. “There,” Tobias said gently, at her shoulder. She followed his gaze to where Ian was striding across the ballroom, looking just as grim as Tobias.

  “Penelope?” she asked, darting forward. She had to leap over two young men and a debutante lying in a puddle of spilled wine.

  “She’s fine,” Ian replied. “But asleep like the others. I didn’t have an extra shield charm and it was too late to get her out of range.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, as calmly as she could, making her way to her cousin. Penelope was draped comfortably across two chairs, petals on the floor at her feet. At least Ian hadn’t let her fall. She glared around the room, feeling bleak and lost. “What’s happened here?”

  “One of the magical wards must have disintegrated,” Tobias explained. “From these side effects, it must be one of the fail-safes designed to put people to sleep if an excess of sudden magic triggers it. It’s meant to keep us secret from regular London folk.”

  “There are over three hundred people here,” she said, trying to wrap her brain around it.

  “Magic is leaking through London and it’s nothing if not unpredictable. Two days ago a woman in Cavendish Square swore her cat talked to her, and all the crows in the park turned yellow just this morning.” He shook his head. “We’re in for a rough night.”

  “Who’s doing this?”

  Ian shrugged. “Probably just a side effect from the gates being opened and the Sisters. No one knows.”

  “I’ve already summoned the Order,” Tobias said. Gretchen hadn’t even seen him do it. He was rather terrifyingly efficient.

  “I’ll secure the
perimeter,” Ian suggested. “Can you track the broken ward?”

  “Yes. We’ll also need to cast a waking spell, and then memory charms on each of the cowans.”

  “Cowan?” Gretchen echoed, confused.

  “The nonwitch guests. It will take hours.”

  Gretchen rubbed her arms, guests scattered all around her. They looked like dolls, pretty and pampered and helpless. It made her queasy to look at them. “Are they in pain?”

  “No,” Tobias replied. “Not as such. But the longer they stay in a magic sleep like this one, the more dangerous it is. Some won’t ever wake, others will lose their memories.”

  She turned to stare at him. “But my cousin is here! And my mother!”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. We’ll do the best we can.” He touched her arm, above her glove where it ended at the elbow. “They’re strong. And if we can find a way to wake them soon, they won’t be in any danger. If I can track the ward it will be over all that much faster.” He turned on his heel, carefully assessing the room.

  “It’s not in this house,” Gretchen said with certainty. “I’d hear it, if it was.”

  “Bad luck,” Ian panted, rushing in through the garden doors. “It’s still spreading.”

  Tobias cursed. “How fast?”

  “Too fast. By the time the others get here, it will have contaminated at least two more streets. There’s already been two carriage accidents out front.”

  “And Gretchen says the magic isn’t coming from inside this house.” Tobias shook his head. “But even when I find it, I won’t be able to stop it. I’m not a spell-breaker. We’ll have to wait for the Order to send someone to us.”

  “I can do it,” Gretchen offered quietly.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Do what, exactly? Even if we knew what’s to be done, undoing a spell like this isn’t something to take on lightly. It’s not like shooting a charmed poppet with your brother’s pistol.”

  “Can’t hurt.” Ian shrugged.

  “I wish that were true,” Gretchen muttered.

  Chapter 5

  The scene outside the MacGregor house wasn’t any less disturbing.