Broom with a View (19 page)

The conversation swayed to and fro while the gentlemen enjoyed more wine. The two Warlocks began to tease the Vampire about his limited diet and eventually convinced him to nibble on a piece of bacon. Sebastian made such a face that the other men tumbled over laughing.

“I say, this is good fun,” Mr. B chuckled. “As High Sorcerer, I spend so much time with pensioners discussing their ailments and their gardens. It’s so nice to be out with a couple of young, hardy fellows.”

“Yes,” Sonny said, intent on teasing him, “you’re not too bad for an old sod.” Then to Sebastian
, he added, “And I don’t mind admitting that I’m glad I didn’t kill you when I had the chance. Then we wouldn’t be out here having a laugh.”

“I’m quite glad you’re still alive as well,” Sebastian had to agree. “Plus, it would be terribly awkward explaining things to your sister and that aunt of yours if I’d happened to kill you.”

Sonny set down his glass. “So why didn’t you attack me in that bloody cavern, anyway?” he demanded.

“Because you weren’t attacking me,” Sebastian informed him. “I didn’t want to be impolite.”

“Well, you started it,” the Warlock said, snatching up his wine again. “Here’s to…” he started to toast but was cut off by Mr. B.

“Quiet, you fools,” the Sorcerer snapped in a low voice. “The faye. They’re coming.”

Both of the younger men paused in their jocularity. “How can you tell?” Sebastian asked, glancing around.

“The coral bells,” Mr. B informed them. “They’re ringing. Can’t you hear them
?”

They all stopped to listen. There was the sound of a faint chiming rising and falling with the breeze. “That’s the flowers?” Sebastian wanted to know. “Making that music? I didn’t know flowers could make music.”

“Only the lilies of the valley, as far as I know,” said Mr. B. “And that’s only when there are fairies about.”

Sonny froze. “I see one,” he whispered, staring beyond Mr. B’s shoulder. “She’s a real beauty.”

The other men slowly turned their heads to get a look at the diminutive creature dressed in yellow. She appeared to be part beautiful girl, part butterfly, and part something more sinister in a way that was difficult to put a finger on. It wasn’t too hard to imagine that fairies had quite sharp teeth. “She’s drinking the wine,” Sebastian exclaimed in an excited hushed voice. The sylph had her face submerged deep into an acorn cap. “I think she likes it.”

They began to notice more of the faye appearing out of nowhere, surrounding them, partaking of the sweet drink they’d set out to please them. “I say,” Mr. B exclaimed when he felt a small tugging at his boo
t and realized it was one of the fairies. “They’re not quite as timid as you’d expect.”

Sebastian was startled by the appearance of a faye on his shoulder and almost went to swat it like a bug. “Don’t,” Sonny said in a warning hiss. “That would lead to no end of trouble.”

“Just an automatic reflex to the unexpected,” the Vampire explained, happy he’d caught himself in time. The tiny girl reached up and popped one of the tabs on Sebastian’s collar. “Bad fairy,” the Vampire lightly chastised her, making the little creature giggle with delight.

“Look,” Mr. B said in a soft voice. Right in front of them, some of the faye had gathered in the exact center of the mushroom ring. The coral bells had started playing an otherworldly melody
, and the fairies, linking arms in groups of twos or threes, started dancing to the music. As the sylphs danced, they stirred up pollen from the flowers, or maybe it was simply fairy dust, but a shimmering sheen of gold wafted through the air powdering the men and causing a few sneezes.

Before any of the humans even knew what they were about, they found themselves dancing, too
, leaping and twirling, laughing and frolicking. The fairies rose into the air, beating their colorful wings, and began darting about, loosening collars and pulling off boots. A small girl dressed in blue made off with one of Mr. B’s pearl cuff links. It was from a set his father had given him when he’d turned sixteen, so he hated to lose it but found himself laughing anyway and dancing all the more uninhibitedly.

The fay
e plied the men with more honeysuckle wine, lifting the small thimbles to their lips and spilling it in their mouths again and again. Shirtfronts came undone, and studs were strewn about the grass. The men were all singing a nonsense song that didn’t have any proper words, or at least none that human’s could understand, and they would simultaneously leap into the air when the melody rose then drop down onto the ground when it descended.

After a while
, they were all too exhausted, not to mention drunk on wine and fairy magic, to stay standing any longer. They tumbled onto the grass and gasped for air, still humming snatches of the tune and giggling from time to time. “I do believe I just saw a pair of men’s trousers fly away,” Mr. B said. The sight had broken him out of a reverie that involved staring at a very small cloud that was tinged with pink and gold as the sun threatened to dip below the horizon.

“They may very well be yours,” Sebastian informed the Sorcerer.

“Couldn’t be,” Mr. B replied, suddenly finding it very hard to keep his eyelids open. “I don’t seem to be wearing any.”

Chapter 18: The Trouble with Fairies

“Anyone know the whereabouts of Sonny?” Mrs. Popplewell asked at breakfast. The young man’s bed hadn’t been slept in
, and his clothes weren’t strewn about the floor of his room. That was the mother’s first tip that something was not right.

Violet looked up from her breakfast. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” the girl said. “He was going with Mr. B to meet the Du Mondes.”

“The Du Mondes?” her mother asked, obviously not remembering the details of the cottage rental.

“It’s those Vampire
s,” Cyril said with a smirk. “The ones to which Mr. Wainbright rented.”

“On Cyril’s recommendation,” Violet added, shooting her fiancé an angry look.

“Oh, that was good of you, Cyril,” Mrs. Popplewell said, a bit distracted. “I suppose I could send a note around to Mr. B and see if he knows where Sonny has gone off to.”

“Who are you sending
?” Cyril asked, a bit curious. The Popplewells only kept a cook and a maid, neither of which seemed appropriate to send out with a hastily scrawled note.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” was the reply. Mrs. Popplewell went into the next room to retrieve a fresh piece of stationery from her writing desk. She wrote a quick note
and addressed the envelope to Mr. B. If she had been sending the correspondence by post she would have applied a seal with wax, but seeing that it was just a quick message, she didn’t bother. That was one of the benefits of having such an easygoing High Sorcerer. Mrs. Popplewell clapped the envelope between her hands then started rubbing it between her palms, faster and faster, while she whispered a simple incantation. The note appeared to dissolve between her fingertips until nothing was there at all. Then the good lady returned to her daughter and future son-in-law in the breakfast room.

A few minutes later, once Mrs. Popplewell had tucked into eggs and toast, the note reappeared to the left of her place setting. “Oh dear,” she murmured. “Mr. B doesn’t appear to be about.” She looked over at her daughter. “I wonder if the two of you wouldn’t mind dropping by to see Mr. Wainbright’s new tenants after breakfast. “Just to check if the young man is about or if he’s gone missing
, too.”

“I have a few business correspondence
s that I was hoping to take care of this morning,” Mr. Wilberforce said, looking pale. He didn’t mind using a Vampire for a bit of a prank, but paying a call on one, even during daylight hours, was a bit more than he’d bargained for.

“Can’t that wait for now?” Mrs. Popplewell asked, not clueing in on his discomfort. “They’re friends of yours, of course, so I’m sure you’ve been intending to call on them in the next day or two anyway.”

“They’re no friends of mine, I can assure you,” Cyril said, looking a bit red and speaking into his napkin under the guise of wiping his chin. “I just happened to know they were looking for a cottage; that’s all.”

“We’d be glad to go over,” Violet assured her mother, who was starting to look a bit worried. “I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything. Cyril and I will straighten it out.”

“Send me a note once you know anything,” Mrs. Popplewell said, causing her daughter to scrunch her nose. Violet was awfully good at sending notes, but they rarely appeared at their proper destination.

“Do you think it’s quite safe?” Cyril asked an hour later as he escorted his fiancée to the Wainbright cottages. “Calling on a Vampire, I mean. You don’t think they’ve, you know, had Sonny over for dinner,” he said with a significant look.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. If you’re so afraid of Vampires then I’d ask why you invited a couple to live in the
neighbourhood?” Violet demanded. She was still vexed with him for his nasty trick, and she hadn’t slept well the night before. She kept having dreams of Cyril wearing his glasses to their marital bed, and it was oddly disquieting. Plus, the knowledge that Sebastian and his father were only a stone’s throw from Gallows Road left her feeling unsettled. She couldn’t help but recall the last time she’d seen the young Du Monde.

“I’m not afraid,” Cyril snapped at her. “And it doesn’t serve whoever lives in the
neighbourhood once I’ve pried you away from living with the bumpkins and we’ve moved to town.”

Violet said nothing of his rude remark but instead chewed the side of her lip and knitted her eyebrows together. It had never occurred to her that she’d be expected to give up her home completely once she was married.

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen hide or hair of them,” was the Count Du Monde’s response once they’d knocked on the cottage door and he’d answered, still in his dressing robe, his graying hair tousled. “It’s not like Sebastian not to tell me where he’s headed or when I can expect him back.”

Violet stepped inside the cottage at the Count Du Monde’s request so that he wouldn’t have to stand there with the morning sun beating down on him, but Cyril was more reluctant to enter the Vampire’s abode. He’d not even wanted to so much as ring the bell, so Violet had to do it.

“I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday, so I spent most the day in my coffin,” the Count explained. “When I did rise, I found that we’d had visitors. Not the Vampire sort because there was food consumed. I could tell by the dishes. And I think they must have had honeysuckle wine, if I’m not mistaken. The smell was very familiar to be, but then it was something my brothers and I used to sneak from the cupboard when I was a boy.”

“That would be from my mother,” Violet said with a nod. Mrs. Popplewell was known to send a jug of the flower mead around for the slightest reason. “Was there any clue at all where they might have gone?”

“No, not that I could make out,”
said Count Du Monde. “I did notice one strange thing. I have a collection of bone china thimbles. They were Sebastian’s mother’s, and I’ve always kept them. Well, for some reason, they seem to be missing.”

“Perhaps they were stolen,” Cyril suggested. He’d managed to ease himself into the room.

“I doubt it,” said the old man. “The silver’s all here, but the thimbles are gone. That doesn’t sound like much of a robbery to me.”

“Missing thimbles and honeysuckle wine,” Violet mused to herself. Then, looking up at the Count’s concerned face, she said, “Don’t worry. I think I have an inkling where they’ve gone.”

“Should I attend you?” the elder Vampire asked, his voice catching a note of alarm. “Is there any chance of danger?”

Violet suppressed a giggle. “No,” she assured him. “No danger that I am aware of. Either your son will be home within the hour or I’ll send you a note as to when you can expect him.”

“I really should go with you,” Count Du Monde insisted, peering out the window at the bright blue sky.

“It’s such a sunny morning,” the girl said, placing a comforting hand on his forearm. “I see no reason to expose you to harmful rays. Just trust me when I say the men have been up to hijinks rather than any type of danger.”

Violet led her fiancé through the woods and glades of the Surrey countryside. “It’s a very tall tree with a peculiar fork,” she instructed him as she tried to divine their path.

“What do you mean by a peculiar fork?” Cyril wanted to know as he picked his way along. He’d already felt the need to state that, “If I’d known we were going to go mountaineering, I would have worn different boots,” but seeing that any incline they encountered was very mild, the girl assumed it was a Mortal way of joking.

“I’m not sure how else to describe it,” Violet admitted. “I guess it looks a bit like a devil’s fork, if you can imagine that as being a part of a tree.