Lily and the Prisoner of Magic (10 page)

‘Most people would never want to,’ Henrietta snapped. ‘But yes.’

‘What are you two trying to say?’ Georgie stood up, her face whitish in the fierce electric glare of the cabin lights.

Lily sighed, and went over to her sister, wrapping her arms around her. Georgie was shaking. ‘We’re saying that Mrs Archibald definitely isn’t who she says she is. She’s almost certainly got a glamour on, and she has a pet parrot that’s actually some sort of spell-flesh. And the only person we know who can do that is our mother.’

Georgie sagged in her arms. ‘She’s following us!’ she whispered.

Henrietta shook her head. ‘No. She hasn’t shown any interest in you two, or Colette. And she didn’t even seem to notice me!’ Henrietta sounded rather indignant about this. ‘Marten saw me in London, even if your mother never did, and I am quite recognisable. No. This is just luck – good or bad, I’m not sure which.’

Georgie lifted her head from Lily’s shoulder and gaped at the dog. ‘How could it be good luck? She’s hunting us!’

Henrietta sniffed. ‘You, actually. And I think she may have given up on you for the moment. She must have some other plan. Perhaps this plot to assassinate the Queen has co-conspirators in New York? Or maybe she just wants to live somewhere that she doesn’t have to hide her magic. Perhaps she’s given up on the plot.’

Lily shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that at all.’

Henrietta nodded. ‘No, maybe not. But it is good luck that we’ve spotted her then. We want to know where she is and what she’s doing, don’t we?’

‘We have to stay out of her way,’ Lily murmured anxiously. ‘You especially, Georgie.’ She pushed her sister down on the little sofa and sat next to her, eyeing her sternly. ‘If you get too close to her, she’ll be able to sense those spells. And they might sense her too.’

‘I don’t understand why she has to go to the bother of disguising herself,’ Colette said, frowning, as she began to remove her make-up at the ornate dressing table. ‘Ugh, this lighting makes me look haggard. I much prefer gas lamps. If she’s such a powerful magician, can’t she just fly herself to New York, or something like that? She must have had to fake papers too, to get on the ship.’

Lily exchanged a glance with Georgie, remembering their own attempt at travelling by magic. ‘It’s exhausting, trying to do something like that. And the same with her glamour. Mama could probably convince everyone on the ship that she was an alligator if she wanted to, but it would take a lot more magic than just being a grumpy old lady. People expect old ladies like Mrs Archibald on ships, I think. And the parrot distracts people, if her glamour slips at all. Anyway, the fake papers might not have been too difficult. Mama wrote letters to other magicians in hiding all the time, didn’t she, Georgie? They were all plotting together, Penelope and Cora Dysart told us that. If she’s joined up with the other old magical families like the Dysarts, she could probably have a whole ship to herself if she wanted. Jonathan Dysart is one of the queen’s favourites, isn’t he?’

Colette nodded. ‘I’ve heard of him. But he’s not a magician, Lily. He’s always talking about how magic is a corrupting influence on society. He was in the paper, saying it ought to be stamped out once and for all.’

Lily snorted. ‘He is. He’s just brilliant at hiding it. And his daughters are a pair of sweet-faced little beasts. They were the ones who had us sent to Fell Hall.’ She shivered. ‘If Mama has talked to them, she’ll know that Aunt Clara was hiding us at her house.’

There was silence in the velvety room for a moment.

‘What do you think she would do?’ Georgie whispered. ‘It isn’t that I really liked Aunt Clara, but I don’t want her to be…well, to have bits of her made into another parrot, maybe. And I
do
like Louis.’

Louis was the girls’ cousin, a sulky, standoffish boy. They had all thoroughly disliked each other to start with, but eventually Louis had realised that his mother was hiding her own magic, and that he might have inherited it from her. He’d helped Henrietta to escape from Aunt Clara’s house so she could chase after the girls on their way to Fell Hall.

‘Perhaps we could write to him,’ Georgie suggested rather helplessly. ‘Send him a warning.’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Lily said sadly. ‘Maybe Mr Dysart didn’t tell Mama about us – I’m not even sure he really knew who we were. It was Cora and Penelope who got us taken away; he just had to go along with it.’

‘You had better keep to the cabin for the rest of the journey,’ Colette said worriedly. ‘I can watch out for Mrs Archibald. Perhaps I can find out where she’s going to stay in New York, or if she’s travelling on somewhere else.’

Lily frowned. It seemed cowardly just to hide away in the cabin, but if it really was only chance that they had ended up on the same ship as Mama, it would be stupid to risk her catching Georgie again. ‘You’d better be careful,’ she told Colette seriously. ‘She might look like a dotty old lady right now, but she’s as mad as a box of frogs. She doesn’t care if anyone gets hurt, as long as she gets what she wants. She filled Georgie up with the worst kind of magic, remember, starting when she was tiny. And we’re pretty sure she killed both our sisters,’ Lily added with a gulp. ‘She’ll do anything, she really will.’

‘I wonder if I could sneak into her room,’ Henrietta said thoughtfully.

Georgie and Lily both turned to stare at her. ‘Are you mad?’

‘Short of Colette wandering up to her after a concert and just happening to ask why she’s going to New York and who she’s meeting, how else are we going to find out?’ Henrietta gave an irritable little growl.

‘If Marten saw you, then Mama knows about you,’ Lily told her stubbornly. ‘She might not have noticed a black pug on the ship, but if she sees you hanging around her room, she’s going to remember!’

Henrietta slumped down on the chair, her nose on her paws. ‘I suppose,’ she muttered. She breathed loud, whistly dog-sighs for a while and then sat up again, her eyes sparkling. ‘You could glamour me, Lily! I could be a wolfhound! I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be tall.’

‘Wolfhounds aren’t exactly made for sneaking about,’ Georgie said, rather unkindly. ‘You’d be even more obvious than usual.’

‘But it’s a good idea…’ Lily stood up, pacing thoughtfully round the cabin. ‘Except
I’ll
do it. I’ll glamour myself to look like the maid that cleans Mama’s room.’

‘I thought we were keeping to the cabin and keeping out of her way!’ Georgie wailed.

‘You need to. But I’ve not got spells in me that she’ll recognise, have I? She hardly ever saw me at Merrythought, and I’ll be glamoured anyway. We might be able to find out what she’s doing, Georgie. We need to know.’

‘We need not to be dead, or worse!’ Georgie said. Her voice softened. ‘Lily, maybe we shouldn’t even try to find her. Maybe we should just run away, go off and make our fortunes in America like this Rose did. It’s a big place. Couldn’t we just stay out of Mama’s way?’

Lily wrapped an arm round her. ‘I’d like that too. But I don’t think Mama’s come here because she’s given up, Georgie. It’s part of the plot. I bet Henrietta’s right – she’s come to find more magicians to join in. I know we think Mama’s mad, but our family’s famous, the name means a lot to people like us. And I think Mama could be very persuasive. We can’t let her drag anyone else into the plot. Besides, we promised Miss Jane.’

‘But I promised her that I’d look after you, too,’ Georgie sighed. ‘And now you’re about to walk into Mama’s rooms and start spying. I wish we’d never got into all of this.’

‘We didn’t have a choice. We were born into it, weren’t we? I promise, once we’ve taken the spells out of you, you can be as boring as you like. You can work at the theatre and you never even need to look at another spell.’ Lily shook her head at the thought of it. She’d never thought they would end up travelling to America, but now she was secretly looking forward to it. She would be able to do any magic she liked, without hiding it away! She could feel the magic dancing in her blood just with the thought. ‘But we have to do this first, before you can settle down.’ She looked anxiously at Georgie. Her sister’s white-blonde hair was trailing across her face, and she couldn’t see her eyes. But she suspected Georgie was crying.

‘I know all that really,’ Georgie whispered at last. ‘It doesn’t make it any easier.’ She shook her hair back, and tried to look determined. ‘So how are we going to do it?’

‘Well, at least on a ship there are times for things. We know when she goes to dinner.’

‘The parrot doesn’t,’ Georgie reminded her. ‘Not after the incident with the green beans. But she always takes a walk on the promenade deck in the mornings. And the parrot goes with her.’ Georgie shook her hair back again, and stroked the pleats in her skirt so that it sat nicely. ‘I could watch them, and then if she starts to go back to her room, I can run ahead and warn you.’

‘You promise you can keep out of sight?’ Henrietta scratched demandingly at Georgie’s boots.

‘I promise,’ Georgie agreed, tucking her feet under the chair. She swallowed hard. ‘We’ll do it tomorrow.’

‘
T
here! She’s gone off to the promenade deck.’ Lily craned her neck around the corner of the passage.

‘We’ll follow her then,’ Georgie said, her voice rather small. ‘Ugh. Did you have to make this hat so big, Lily? It looks like I’ve got a cake on my head.’

They had decided earlier on that morning that Georgie had better be glamoured as well, just in case Mama spotted her. She was now several years older, and dressed in the height of fashion – Lily had copied the outfit from a colour plate in the
Ladies’ Monthly Museum
, which someone had left lying around in one of the saloons.

‘It isn’t as big as the one in the picture!’ Lily protested. ‘I thought you’d probably fall over if I made it that huge. And it doesn’t really look like a cake. More like a meringue.’ She giggled.

‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about,’ Henrietta muttered. ‘We need to go now, Lily. The sooner I’m out of this unnatural shape, the better.’ She fluttered and shuddered, shaking out the green feathers irritably.

‘If anyone comes, then I’ve the perfect excuse for being in her stateroom,’ Lily said, for at least the sixth time. ‘Everyone on board knows about that awful parrot. I’ll just say that I found it flying about in one of the parlours, and brought it back.’ She grinned at Henrietta. ‘But you’ll need to squawk, you know. It’s always making the most unholy noise.’

Henrietta snarled, which was a rather strange sound, coming from a parrot. Lily was surprised she could still do it, actually, with a beak, but then she supposed the beak was only imaginary. The glamours she made weren’t even as much as skin deep, since she’d never been taught the proper way to do them. If anyone stroked Henrietta, they would probably still feel fur. But then no one would be stupid enough to stroke Mrs Archibald’s parrot, which was known to be vicious as well as noisy. And even if Henrietta’s glamour was only thin, Lily was still very proud of it. She had glamoured herself and Georgie before, into old ladies, to disguise themselves in London, but she had never tried to glamour another creature. The spell had taken a while, and Henrietta had been forced to sit motionless and watch herself growing feathers. She was still in the worst of tempers.

‘We’ll see you soon,’ Georgie told her. ‘Be careful. And quick! Just a few minutes, remember? We don’t know how long she’ll be up on deck.’

Lily nodded, and watched them hurry away down the corridor.

‘Why did your mother have to make her new spell-creature a parrot?’ Henrietta growled. ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to fly, Lily. I’ve still got paws under all this, you know. It won’t work.’

‘Just flap a bit,’ Lily told her consolingly. ‘If anyone comes you could try fluttering around. There isn’t a lot of space for proper flying in these passageways anyway.’

‘A wolfhound. Would it really have made much difference?’ Henrietta spat, making a series of ungainly hops to jump onto Lily’s outstretched arm. ‘You look perfectly normal. You’re doing this to tease me.’

‘The maid who does her room
is
perfectly normal!’ Lily protested. ‘I just had to make myself a little older and darken my hair. With the uniform on, everyone will just assume I’m a maid. It won’t fool any of the staff who know the girl well, though.’ She stopped in front of a smart white and gilt door. ‘This is her room. She must have got some money from somewhere; this is one of the really expensive suites, I think.’

Henrietta fluttered down from her wrist and scrabbled awkwardly at the door handle. ‘Ugh! These claw things are no good at all! And as I thought, Lily, this door is locked. Now what do we do?’ Lily stroked her fingers lightly down the white wooden panelling, trying to feel for a spell. She didn’t want to set off some sort of magical alarm and bring her mother hurrying back down from the deck. ‘It’s all right, I brought a spell with me to help. I found the idea for this in one of Daniel’s books back at the theatre.’ She drew a little cloth bundle out of her pocket, and unwrapped it.

Henrietta clawed her way up Lily’s uniform sleeve to her shoulder, and peered down. ‘Uuuugh, what is that?’