The Sweet Far Thing (76 page)

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smile, the fangs as long as my leg. Its claws are terrifyingly sharp. A scream dies in my throat. The beast screeches as its claws come around me, closing firmly about my waist. Blackness steals over me.

“Hold fast,” the gargoyle commands in a gravelly voice, snapping me back to fear. He tucks me in close to his body, and we take flight. I hold tightly to those frightening claws. It takes me a moment to fully realize what is happening. The gargoyle doesn’t wish me harm. He means to protect me. The sky is alive with winged beasts. They screech and growl. The sounds reverberate in my ears but I don’t dare let go to cover them. The rush of air is cool against my sodden gown and wet skin. I shiver as we pass over the tops of trees and land gently on Spence’s roof.

“Do not look,” he advises.

But I cannot look away. Below, the other gargoyles have cornered Ithal. They reach down and pluck him from the ground, flying toward the lake.

“What will they do?” I ask.

“What they must.” He does not elaborate, and I dare not question him further.

“Wh-who are you?”

“I am one of the guardians of the night,” he says, and I am reminded of Wilhelmina’s drawing. “We protected your kind for centuries when the veil between worlds had no seal. Now the seal is broken. The land is enchanted again. But I fear we cannot keep you safe from what has begun.”

The sky blackens with wings. Overhead, the gargoyles circle, casting me in shadows. They swoop low and land as lightly as angels upon the roof. A gargoyle with the nose of a dragon approaches.

“It is done,” he growls. “He has been returned to the dead.”

The gargoyle who saved me nods. “This is not the last we shall see of them. They will come again and stronger.”

A ribbon of pink shows in the eastern sky. The other gargoyles take their familiar perches on the edge of the roof. As I watch, they return to stone.

“I am dreaming,” I whisper. “This is all a dream.”

The head gargoyle spreads his wings till all his darkness surrounds me. His voice is as deep as time.

“Yes, you have been sleeping. But now is the time to wake.”

I open my eyes. My ceiling takes shape. I can hear Ann’s gentle snoring. I’m in my room, as I should be. It is past dawn but barely so. I sit up, and my body aches with the effort. A great clamor rises in the woods. Hardly dressed, girls push out of their doors to see what has happened. In the early morning mist, the Gypsies gather at the lake with their lanterns. A cry of grief rises from them.

Now I see. Ithal lies in the water facedown, drowned. That was why Freya stopped beside the lake,
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why she seemed so upset. She knew that her master was dead, and the thing on her back was undead, a hellish messenger from the Winterlands sent to take me to them.

No. No, that did not happen. I imagined it all. Or dreamed it. A dead man did not come to spirit me away. I did not fly in a gargoyle’s grip.

I look up for confirmation. The gargoyles sit on the roof ’s edge, silent and unseeing. I turn my head this way and that, but they do not change.
Of course not. They are stone, silly girl.
I chuckle. This gets the attention of the crowd, for I am laughing while they pull a dead man from the lake.

Kartik is there, right as rain, not a mark on him. He looks at me with concern.

The men cover Ithal with a jacket.

“You must build the fire,” Mother Elena says. “Burn him. Burn everything.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

IT IS ASTONISHING THAT WITH A MAN DROWNED IN THEwoods, my behavior at the ball should become the talk of Spence, but it has. At breakfast, girls hush as I walk past; they track me with their eyes, like vultures waiting for carrion. I sit with the older girls, and they fall silent. It’s as if I were Death himself, scythe at the ready.

I hear the girls whispering to each other. “Ask her.”

“No, you!”

Cecily clears her throat. “How are you feeling, Gemma?” she asks with pretend sympathy. “I heard you had a terrible fever.”

I spoon porridge into my mouth.

“Is that true?” Martha presses.

“No,” I say. “I was overcome by too much magic. And by the lies and secrets that make up this place as surely as the stones and mortar.”

Their mouths open in shock, and uncomfortable giggling follows. Fee and Ann look on with alarm. I’m no longer hungry. I push away from the table and walk out of the dining room. Mrs. Nightwing glances up, but she doesn’t try to stop me. It’s as if she knows I’m a lost cause.

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Felicity and Ann come to visit in the afternoon. Their curiosity about my madness has won out over their anger. Felicity pulls a sack of toffees from her pocket.

“Here. I thought you might need these.”

I let them sit on the bed, untouched. “You went into the realms last night, didn’t you?”

Ann’s eyes widen. It is a wonder that she could make so fine an actress yet be so terrible a liar.

“Yes,” Felicity says, and I’m grateful for her honesty. “We danced and Ann sang and it was such a merry time that I didn’t care if we never came back. It is like paradise there.”

“You can’t live in paradise all the time,” I say.

Felicity pockets the toffees. “You can’t keep us from the realms,” she says, rising.

“Things have changed. Circe has the dagger,” I say, and I tell them everything I remember from last night. “I can’t hold the magic by myself anymore. We need to make the alliance and go after Circe.”

Felicity’s face clouds. “You promised we wouldn’t give the magic back until after our debuts. You promised to help me.”

“You might come away with enough magic of your own—”

“And I might not! I’ll be trapped! Please, Gemma,” Felicity begs.

“I’m sorry,” I say, swallowing hard. “It can’t be helped.”

Felicity’s passion cools, and I find her calm much more frightening than her anger. “You don’t hold all the magic anymore, Gemma,” she reminds me. “Pip has power, too, and it’s growing stronger. And if
you
won’t help me, I know
she
will.”

“Fee…,” I croak, but she won’t listen. She’s already out the door, Ann at her heels.

The afternoon is a suddenly chilly one, as if winter has one last gasp before summer takes hold.

Inspector Kent has come to see about Ithal’s death. His men comb the woods for evidence of foul play, though they find none. Phantoms leave no trail. Mr. Miller is taken from a pub and brought round for an inquiry, though he protests his innocence, insisting there are ghosts in the woods of Spence.

Kartik has left his calling card—the red cloth—nestled in the ivy outside my window along with a note:
Meet me in the chapel.

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I slip inside the empty chapel and stare at the angel with the gorgon’s head. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. I understand you meant to protect me.”

A deep voice answers. “Go forth and conquer.”

I jump. Kartik shows himself from behind the pulpit. “Forgive me,” he says with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. We’re quite the pair with our long faces and shadowed eyes. He runs a finger across the back of a pew. “Do you remember the first time I surprised you here?”

“Indeed. You frightened me, telling me to close my mind to the visions. I should have listened. I was the wrong girl for all of this.”

He leans against the end of the pew, his arms folded across his chest. “No, you’re not.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done, else you wouldn’t say that.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

It seems to take forever for the words to travel through the wreckage inside me. But they do come, and I don’t spare myself. I tell him everything, and he listens. I’m afraid he’ll hate me for it, but when I’ve finished he only nods.

“Say something,” I whisper. “Please.”

“The warning was for the birth of May. Now we know what it meant, I suppose,” he says, thinking already, and I smile a little because I know this means he’s heard, and we have moved on. “We’ll go after her.”

“Yes, but if I so much as dip a toe into the magic, I fear I’ll be joined to Circe, to the Winterlands. That I’ll go mad as I felt last night.”

“All the more reason to stop her. Perhaps she hasn’t bound Eugenia’s power to the tree just yet. We might still save the realms,” he says.

“We?”

“I’m not running away again. That is not my destiny.”

He slips his hand under my chin and tilts it up, and I kiss him first.

“I thought you stopped believing in destiny,” I remind him.

“I haven’t stopped believing in you.”

I smile in spite of everything. I need his belief just now. “Do you think…” I stop.

“What?” he murmurs into my hair. His lips are warm.

“Do you think, if we were to stay in the realms, that we could be together?”

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“This is the world we live in, Gemma, for better or for worse. Make of it what you can,” he says, and I pull him to me.

After the weeks of excited preparation for the masked ball, Spence is rather like a balloon that has lost all its air. Down come the decorations. Costumes are packed away in tissue and camphor, though some of the younger girls refuse to give theirs up just yet. They want to be princesses and fairies for as long as they can.

Others, ready for the next party, badger Mademoiselle LeFarge for details of her upcoming wedding.

“Will you wear diamonds?” Elizabeth asks.

Mademoiselle LeFarge blushes. “Oh, dear me, no. Too precious. Though I was given a most beautiful pearl necklace to wear.”

“Will you honeymoon in Italy? Or Spain?” Martha asks.

“We will take a modest trip to Brighton,” Mademoiselle LeFarge says, and the girls are deeply disappointed.

Brigid taps my shoulder. “Missus Nightwing is calling for you, miss,” she says sympathetically, and I am afraid to ask what has provoked her kindness.

“Yes, thank you,” I say, following her beyond the baize door to our headmistress’s solid, staid sanctuary. The only spot of color is on a corner table, where wildflowers spill over the boundaries of a vase, dropping petals without care.

Mrs. Nightwing motions to a chair. “How are you feeling today, Miss Doyle?”

“More myself,” I say.

She rearranges the letter opener and the inkwell, and my heart picks up speed. “What is it? What has happened?”

“You’ve a cable from your brother,” she says, handing it to me.

FATHER VERY ILL STOP WILL MEET YOUR TRAIN AT VICTORIA STOP TOM

I blink back tears. I shouldn’t have pushed as I did at the masked ball. He wasn’t ready for truth, and I forced it on him, and now I fear I have delivered an injury from which he cannot fully recover.