CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
hat Sunday, Theo came home from the Medieval Fair inT high spirits, pink-nosed from the cold and hopped up on too much sugar (Malik’s revenge, no doubt). He arrived just minutes after Luke and Posy, who’d spent the afternoon by the sea, and wasted no time in whipping out his phone to show themall the pictures he’d taken.
“That’s Nicholas before the first round, and that’s him after he won that round, and that’s the girl who won the second round, and that’s Alex and me with Nicholas’s horse —”
“Nicholas,” said Posy, pointing. “Theo. Alex. Horse.”
“Good job, Posy,” Theo said enthusiastically. “And this one’s a picture of the huge slice of carrot cake Malik got me, and ooh, look, this is the Black Knight. He’s thevillain.”
“Black Knight,” Posy echoed.
“Alex thinks he’s swoony,” Theo told Sera and Luke, rolling his eyes with youthful disgust.
“He’s wearing a spiky black helmet and full armour,” Sera pointed out. “How does Alex know what he looks like?”
“They said that’s what makes him swoony. He could be anyone. He’s not anyone, though,” Theo added, addressing this last bit solely to Luke in the manner of one imparting
vitally important information. “His real name is Greg. Sera
knows him in the biblical sense.”
“Theo!”
“What? That’s what Clemmie told me.”
Luke arched an eyebrow at Sera. “In the biblical sense?
Him?”
Sera shrugged. “He kept most of the costume on.”
Luke looked at Sera. Sera looked at Luke.
Theo looked at both of them. “Why are you being weird?”
“SEHHH-RAAAA!”
Matilda’s timing had never been so perfect. Sera bolted.
As soon as Sera had dealt with Matilda’s crisis (the persistent attentions of a crow that Sera had once had the audacity to leave a leftover cinnamon bun out for, which meant it now returned to the inn on an almost weekly basis, bringing sticky gummy bears and bubble-gum-flavoured lip balm and other gifts that suggested it thought Sera was thirteen years old), Matilda whisked her to the chicken run, where Jasmine was feeding the chickens, and said, “So?”
“No,” said Sera at once. “No goats.”
“I wasn’t going to ask for a goat!” Matilda said indignantly. “I want an explanation! Jasmine! Tell her we want an explanation!”
Jasmine’s eyes twinkled. “Matilda is suffering from a rather serious case of unsatisfied curiosity, my love.”
“What about?” Sera asked.
“The sexual tension, that’s what!”
“Where?” Sera asked with interest. “Has Nicholas met
someone? Oh! Did you finally tell—”
“No!” Matilda said at once.
“What?” asked Jasmine.
“Nothing,” said Sera and Matilda at exactly the same time. Jasmine looked confused. Turning back to Matilda,
Sera said, “Who exactly are we talking about?”
Matilda looked like she dearly wanted to take one of her wellies off and throw it at Sera. “Who. Do. You. Think?”
Oh. “Me? And Luke? No, that’s not a thing.” Sera looked from one deeply loving and deeply unconvinced face to the other, gave in, and admitted, “Fine, there may have been a moment.”
“I KNEW IT!” Matilda cried. “I mean, no, I didn’t know there was amoment, per se, but there’s positively acrackle in the air when the two of you are in the same room!”
Sera opened her mouth to object, thought about Theo looking at her and Luke just a minute ago and asking them why they were being weird, and closed her mouth again.
Matilda was still going. “Something’s changed in the last few days. Something happened. Hence thecrackle.”
Jasmine shushed her. Hanging the bag of chicken feed off the end of her cane, she leaned on it with both arms and said, in her usual calming, gentle, steadying way, “Tell us about this moment.”
“It was a couple of nights ago. Nothing happened.”
“Did you want it to?” Jasmine asked.
Sera wondered if she could blame the sharp, bracing wind for the way her cheeks were going pink. “Yes. I don’t know if he did, though. I thought he did at the time, but in hindsight, I might have been imagining something that wasn’t there, and in any case, I’m pretty sure his senses had been addled by Matilda’s apple cider.”
“You havegot to be joking.” This contribution came from Clemmie, who had materialised on top of the chicken coop and was looking down at them in disgust. “Sera, I was under the impression that you and I were sensible adults who had our priorities straight.You want your magic back.I want to not be a fox. Where, pray, does sexual tension fit in?” Before
Sera could come up with a suitable reply to this, Clemmie turned to Jasmine and Matilda and said, “I can’t believe she thinks his senses were addled by cider.”
“I don’t think she’s seen the way he looks at her,” Matilda mused.
Jasmine, ever loyal, objected. “We can’t blame her for that, dearest. He only does it when she’s not looking.”
“She doesn’t have fox ears either,” Clemmie admitted somewhat grudgingly. “She doesn’t hear the way his heartbeat stutters when he looks at her.”
“How did this turn into the three of you gossiping about me like I’m not even here?” Sera demanded, seeking refuge in overly exaggerated grumpiness to hide the fact that her heart was doing all sorts of fluttery, flippy, thoroughly obnoxious things in her chest. (It didn’t help matters that Clemmie could probably hearthat too.) “Nobody panic,” Jasmine said suddenly, obviously not panicking in the slightest, “but I think we ought to start talking about something else. Right away.”
“Oh,no, that’s not true at all,” Matilda insisted, rising to the occasion at once. “Pigs are actuallyvery clean! And who can resist their tiny, snouty noses?” Apparently foreseeing that Sera would have no qualms about sharing that she could very easily resist all noses, snouty or not, Matilda went all in on the drama and added, “Look at me, Sera. Look at my ancient, fading bones. How can you deny me what could be my very last wish in this cold, cruel world?”
“Even for you that’s a bit much, don’t you think?” Sera said under her breath, trying not to laugh.
Matilda promptly began to wail into an enormous, flowery, and remarkably convenient hanky that she whipped out of the front pocket of her dungarees. Sera, who had seen mushrooms, daisies, cinnamon buns, satsumas, birdseed, an
umbrella, a whole cabbage, and at least two grasshoppers come out of that exact pocket on one occasion or another, couldn’t help thinking Mary Poppins’s bag could learn a trick or two from Matilda’s dungarees.
From somewhere behind Sera, Luke’s dry voice said,
“What set her off this time?”
“I think I said hi,” said Sera.
Matilda’s noisy wails were interrupted by a short, wheezy laugh, but if Luke noticed, he didn’t let on. He jerked his head off to the side and said, “Can I interrupt?”
“Please interrupt,” said Sera, clambering over the fence of the run and following him away from the sounds of fussing chickens and fussing Matildas. “What’s up?”
He held up a wrinkled piece of paper. “I found this.” It was Sera’s list of ideas for the restoration spell, almost the entirety of which had been ruthlessly scratched out. Luke tapped something about halfway down the page. “Why’s this scratched out?”
It took Sera a second to make out the words in the darkening twilight. “Essence of sunlight? Oh, I was excited about that for roughly five minutes, but Clemmie said it wouldn’t work.”
Luke shook his head. “Clemmie’s wrong. It’s a good idea.”
Clemmie, who had no trouble hearing him from the top of the chicken coop, yelled, “Anybody with a halfway decent magical education knows essence of sunlight is too volatile for spellcasting!”
“Not if it’s been tempered with black sand,” Luke replied.
Clemmie froze. “That’s not a thing.”
“It’s definitely a thing,” said Luke, and, with what must have been heroic restraint, didn’t even add that in future, Sera might want to run her ideas past someone whose magical knowledgewasn’t almost twenty years out of date.
“Look, I’m not saying this is going to work. I’m just saying it’s possible. There’s every chance your teapot will just spit the essence of sunlight right back out, but we won’t know until we try.”
“We?” A tiny smile tugged at the corners of Sera’s mouth.
“You were pretty adamant that you weren’t going to get involved.”
He gave her a faint answering smile. “And here I am
anyway.”
Oh, fuck this.
She hugged him.
The top of her head collided with his jaw, her chin banged into his shoulder, and she ended up practically hanging off his neck, but for the few seconds it lasted, it still, somehow, felt warmer and more comforting and moreright than anything had in a long, long time.
Stepping back and moving on hastily, she said, “How good are our chances? You keep saying that whatever goes into the spell has to matter to me…”
“I think this counts. Do you remember getting your magic tested?”
Sera would never forget it. On her first day at the Guild, she’d been whisked off to a restricted alcove of the library where, surrounded by dusty books and old records and strange, glittering bottles of ingredients, she’d met old, haughty Bradford Bertram-Mogg, who’d looked down his nose at her before pointing one bony finger at a granite pedestal.
The pedestal was black, polished smooth, and its surface perfectly round and perfectly flat. Pursing his lips like she was putting him to a great deal of unnecessary trouble, Bertram-Mogg had plucked a small, round bottle off one of the shelves. Sera had had no idea what was inside, but she
could see that it gleamed so brightly that she almost couldn’t stand to look directly at it.
“That’s essence of sunlight,” Chancellor Bennet had explained, clapping his hands with childlike excitement. “We use it to find out how much magic a witch possesses.”
“Who did you say her father was?” Bertram-Mogg had asked Chancellor Bennet. “Where is he from? Why can’this country take her?”
“For one thing, Bradford, she liveshere, and for another, if you’d seen whatI just saw when I visited her home, you wouldn’t want anyone else taking her.”
Impatient, Albert had intervened. “Get on with it.”
With a grumble, Bertram-Mogg had carefully uncorked the little bottle and had let exactly one drop of the essence of sunlight fall to the surface of the pedestal. Instead of spreading like water, it held its shape like mercury and waited, a small, vibrating bead of burning gold light.
“Touch it,” Bertram-Mogg had instructed, extending the
tip of his index finger to demonstrate.
“Will it hurt?”
He’d tutted. “No.”
“What’s supposed to happen?”
“It will be absorbed into the tip of your finger and, if you are indeed a witch, it will light up under your skin and show us how much power you have. Don’t expect much.” He sniffed. “A single glowing finger is all some witches get. Even those of us from the best and brightest families are lucky to get a full arm.”And you, he might as well have added,are certainly not one of us.
With Chancellor Bennet hopping from one foot to the other beside her like an overexcited sparrow, and Albert watching from the corner with narrow eyes, Sera reached for the bright, quivering drop of light with a nervous finger.
It didn’t hurt, Bradford Bertram-Mogg had been right about that, but she got more than a glowing finger.
The light had spread under her skin, warm and a little tingly, shooting up her arm, shining so brightly you should see it through her clothes, flooding outward into every limb, every hair, every cell, until her body couldn’t contain all the light anymore and the three men had backed away in shock, shielding their eyes.
For one extraordinary moment, Serawas the sun.
“I’ll never forget the look on their faces,” she said to Luke. “They couldn’t look down their noses at me anymore.
They couldn’t believe a nobody like me could possibly be that powerful, but that one drop of sunlight told them they were wrong.”
“To be a fly on that wall,” Luke said with a grin. “It seems to me that we could make a pretty good argument that essence of sunlight is special to you, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I do very much think,” Sera agreed at once.
Clemmie, who had jumped off the coop and stalked over to them, puffed up her russet fur in annoyance. “Well, that’s all well and good, Mr. I Know All There Is to Know about Magic, but I’ve yet to hear how we’re supposed to get our hands on any essence of sunlight. Areyou going to go back to the Guild and get it?”
“No,” Luke admitted, reluctantly. “The Guild doesn’t do the tests at the castle anymore. Four or five years ago, after Bradford Bertram-Mogg kicked up a fuss about having to leave his country house every single time someone needed to be tested, Chancellor Bennet let him move the location of the tests. His house is just about the only place we’ll find essence of sunlight, and no, Clemmie, before you ask, Bradford Bertram-Mogg is not going to give me any.”
“What about your employer?”
“He doesn’t like Verity either.”
“Marvellous,” said Clemmie in a sour voice. “Great.
Spectacular. So what was the point of this, then?”
But Sera was too excited to let this stand. She refused.
She had not gotten her hopes up for nothing.
“So you’re saying the only way we get the essence of sunlight from Bradford Bertram-Mogg’s country house is by taking it,” she said slowly, ignoring the prick of the thorns as she searched her memories of her years with the Guild.
“We’d only need a drop, wouldn’t we? He’d never notice it was gone.”
“We could need a drop, a bottle, or an entire bloomingvat of it, Sera, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference,” Clemmie grumbled. “It’s thetaking it part that’s the problem. The Bertram-Mogg manor is a big, ugly behemoth where, at any given time, you’ll find about a dozen Bertrams, Moggs, and Bertram-Moggs in residenceand, I might add, a few dozen of their staff. Unlike the Guild’s castle, where any witch is
welcome—”
“Hardly,” said Sera.
“—they’re not going to just let anyone in,” Clemmie went on, undeterred. “I might be able to sneak in unnoticed, but fat lot of good that’ll do when I haven’t got—”
“Don’t you dare say it,” said Luke.
“Opposable thumbs,” Clemmie snapped.
A possibility tickled the back of Sera’s mind. It was slightly terrifying, and undoubtedly reckless, but—
“It’s the sixth,” she said.
Luke and Clemmie stared at her.
Okay, thathad been a little vague. “The date. It’s the sixth of December.”
“So?” Clemmie sounded well and truly ready to wash her hands of the whole affair.
“So,” said Sera, meeting Luke’s intent, steady gaze, “does Bradford Bertram-Mogg still host his winter masquerade in the second week of December?”
“No,” Luke said at once, icy, implacable, and more than a
little incredulous.
“He doesn’t?”
“Yes, he does. No, we’re not doing what you’re thinking right now.”
“Why not? Professor Walter used to be invited every year, so now thatyou’re up there with her as one of the Guild’s best magical historians,you must be invited too.” He didn’t deny it. It was all Sera could do to keep herself from squealing with glee. “You could go! You could take me as your date! This isit, Luke. This is how we get in and get the essence of sunlight!”
“Howwe get in?” Luke growled. “You can’t be seen anywhere near that house. You’re in exile.”
“It’s amasquerade,” Sera pointed out. “Everyone will be masked, and it’s been fifteen years since any of them have seen me, so even if Howard Hawtrey or Bradford Bertram- Mogg or someone else who knows you recognises you, they won’t have any idea who I am.”
“No,” Luke said again. “Evenif I thought this was a good idea, I would absolutelynot be taking you.”
“No,” Sera said right back, fiercely. “You’d be risking everything you have. You’re the one they’d recognise. You’re the one who would get in who knows what kind of shit for trying to steal something from one of the wealthiest and most prominent families of the Guild. So no, you have to take me.
I’m the one who wants this. I’m the one who doesn’t have a place there anymore. Besides,” she added, playing an ace she was pretty sure he couldn’t beat, “how many times have you been to that house?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I haven’t.”
“I have. I went to every winter masquerade when I was at the Guild. I know that house. I know where to find what we need.”
Luke stared at her for a long time, his arctic eyes dark and furious, but she could see he was thinking about it, that he knew how much it meant to her and how impossible it would be to change her mind. After a minute, resigned, he said, “Albert will be there. He’s too powerful. If we try sneaking off to steal something right under his nose, it could set off every magical alarm bell he’s got. Besides, if anyone is going to recognise you after all this time, it’s him.”
She nodded. “We won’t be able to stop him going. It’s the biggest night of the year. He won’t be able to resist the opportunity to show off.” She thought about it some more.
“What if we could make him leave for a little while?”
“Oh, really?” Clemmie demanded. “And how, exactly, are
you going to do that?”
“I’m not,” Sera replied. “You are.”
“I hate you,” said Clemmie.
Sera smiled. “And here I thought you’d spent almost twenty years longing for an excuse to break into Albert Grey’s house, spit in his favourite cognac, and knock over his obscenely expensive and dangerously fragile marble statue of himself.”
And Clemmie, the fox, showed all her teeth.
