Whisper the Dead (The Lovegrove Legacy) (38 page)

It took another year to navigate the Channel, made too dangerous to cross by the war and Napoleon. He missed home. He missed the green hills, the silver rain, the yellow fog of London
.

He missed
her.

The colors smeared on the palette in her mind, and Penelope tumbled and bounced between memories.

Lucius was told of an old man who lived in the alley behind la Place de Grève. He talked to himself all day and night, laughing and offering wine to the empty air. Lucius knew a bone-singer when he saw one. His faded eyes tracked movement Lucius couldn’t see. Lucius crouched down beside him, ignoring the pungent smell of unwashed cloth and hair. He placed a jug of wine and a basket of cheese, grapes, and sausages in front of him
. “J’ai besoin de ton aide.”

The man looked at the food, then squinted up at Lucius
. “Va-t’en, salaud.”

He wasn’t friendly or willing. It didn’t matter
.

He’d looked into Lucius’s eyes
.

Lucius smiled, his witch knot flaring. He grabbed his left hand, pressing their witch knots together. “You’ll do as I say, old man.”

Even knowing she couldn’t change the outcome, Penelope tried to warn the old man, but the memory was already changing.

The ring slipped on his finger, put there by a girl with tears on her cheeks. Not just any girl
.

Sophie
.

She smiled up at Lucius, lower lip trembling. “This way we’ll always be together. I’ll wait for you.”

He gathered her close, already missing her. “I’ll find the bones,” he murmured in her hair, which always smelled like lavender. “We’ll bring her back.”

“I love you,” she said, rising on her toes to kiss him. “Come home soon.”

Penelope opened her eyes, seething.

“You toad-spotted varlet.”

• • •

“Don’t try and stop me,” Gretchen snapped as Tobias loped by her side.

“Give me a little credit,” he said quietly. “I can track her, remember?” His nostrils flared as he catalogued scents she couldn’t smell. She felt the loss of her wolf again, sharply.

“What the hell does Lucius have to do with any of this?” She ground her teeth. “I can usually tell when someone is hiding that big of a lie.”

“You’re still learning how to use your gifts,” Tobias pointed out. “It’s as new to you as wearing the wolf is to me.”

She shook her head. “Still, I …” She thought about each time she’d seen Lucius. At the musicale when he’d spilled wine on Penelope’s gloves, at the goblin markets, outside of Gunter’s when she’d heard the warning buzz but had assumed it was a reaction to the dropped stitch on Penelope’s reticule. “It was him all along.” Frustration boiled inside her. “What does he want with her?” she asked. “Or Sophie? And where’s Emma?”

“We’ll find them,” Tobias promised her. “This way.”

Tobias’s tracking led them to Greymalkin House. It was as dilapidated as ever. Even the ivy clinging to the walls looked gray. It tainted the very air, all dust and cobwebs and darkness.

Lucius was outside the gate, holding Penelope’s arm behind her back. Keepers stood on either side with blank expressions. Gretchen didn’t think; she just grabbed the nearest object and lobbed it at Lucius’s head. The stone glanced his cheek. It took
him by surprise, but not long enough for Penelope to dash away. He yanked her back and she yelped in pain.

And then Sophie emerged from a waiting carriage. The roof was thick with sparrows and pigeons. She wore a pale yellow muslin dress with a row of topaz buttons. She floated with all the grace of a debutante, her smile politely bland. She wore a necklace of pearls and diamonds that glimmered prettily. Gretchen looked closer. It wasn’t just pearls she wore. Godric’s locket gave her the ability to see what was really chained around her neck, and it wasn’t pretty stones. The pearls glowed blue and violet, unfurling chains of light that stretched out behind her.

Leashed to that virulent light were the ghosts of the people she’d murdered and whose bones she’d stolen.

Gretchen recognized Margaret York, Sophie’s first victim. She still wore her silk ball gown, stained with blood.

Beside her, Alice the seamstress with her pinpricked fingertips and plain homespun dress.

Lilybeth, with her sad, surprised eyes, clutching at the leash that burned around her wrist.

Strawberry was there as well, though not chained. The whips of light snapped at her like serpents, but she fought their pull. Her edges were smeared, nebulous. Sophie hadn’t managed to steal her bones before Moira burned them in the funeral boat. Godric was there too in his striped waistcoat and pale hair. The whips slashed hungrily and impatiently.

“We are still here.”

Gretchen stopped breathing.

“
You
killed him,” she finally croaked, swaying as her vision went red. Tobias’s hand on her arm kept her from shattering into pieces. She wondered if she hadn’t fully shifted out of wolf form, because all she could hear was desperate howling.

“It was meant to keep you distracted,” Lucius said. “We did warn you, but you reversed the poppet curse onto us. It had to go somewhere, didn’t it?”

“What’s she doing here?” Sophie asked Lucius. “She’s the worst of them. I thought we agreed to keep them occupied and separated.”

“Why?” Gretchen asked flatly.

“To keep you out of the way,” she snapped. “You and your cousins ruined it all for me. And I won’t fail again. I can’t.”

“So raising the dead is an excuse for killing my brother?” she spat. “For killing all of those girls?” She was dimly aware of Tobias holding her back, mostly because every time she surged forward, Lucius’s hold on Penelope tightened painfully. His hand was around her neck now, immobilizing her. There were hawthorn petals in her dark hair.

“What do you mean, Godric’s dead?” Penelope asked, her cheeks going pale.

“Alas, no witch’s rhyme to turn back time; only a warlock’s spell unrings the bell. To rise up those that fell, court thee the Seven Sisters well,”
Gretchen quoted.

Tobias forgot that he was preventing Gretchen from attacking Sophie and took a step forward himself. “You can’t be serious. You could never control all Seven Sisters.”

“I’ve been gathering power, or haven’t you noticed? I can do anything.”

“Ignore him, love,” Lucius said softly. “He doesn’t understand. He never will.”

“But you courted me,” Penelope whispered. “You said you loved me.”

“He loves me,” Sophie broke in savagely. “
Me
.”

“Lucius, let the Lady Penelope go,” Tobias said softly. “Or I can guarantee it will end badly for you.”

“You can’t do anything to me without doing it to her as well,” he said. “She’s mine now.”

“Oh, I really don’t think so,” Gretchen said. “You’re as mad as Sophie is. And you’ll be equally dead if anything happens to Penelope.”

“I’m not mad,” Sophie insisted. The ghosts of her victims floated behind her. Frost clung to the cobblestones. “And I
am
sorry, you know. But I’m doing this for love.”

“Love?” Gretchen spat. “For a man who courted my cousin?”

Her eyes glittered. “My
sister
died of a fever when I was twelve years old. She was only ten. And I couldn’t heal her. Me, with my healing gifts. But at least I can bring her back now.”

“That’s who I saw in the vision,” Penelope realized softly.

“My brother for your sister?” Gretchen seethed. “By sacrificing a house full of witches?”

“By sacrificing anyone. Anything,” she replied acidly. “That’s what family is. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t do the same? For your brother? For your cousins?”

“Where’s Emma?” Gretchen and Penelope demanded in unison. Penelope’s voice was more of a rasp.

“She’ll be along,” Sophie said. “The Sisters are fetching her even now.”

“But why? Why the Sisters again?” Penelope asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Who cares?” Gretchen said. “She’s selfish and insane. Someone punch her in the eye already.” Instantly, her knee flared with pain. She felt the bruise forming, just as she had when she was seven years old and had fallen from her pony. A gash opened on her arm, blood seeping into her sleeve. There was a rush of dizziness and a headache burst in her left temple. She’d hurt herself in this exact way falling from a horse.

“Oh dear, it looks as though you were rather clumsy as a child,” Sophie said. “You’ll find that regrettable.”

“What are you doing to her?” Penelope struggled. Lucius tightened his fingers and she stilled, going pale. “Gretchen, get out of here!”

Tobias half stepped in front of her, but it didn’t stop Sophie’s magic. Gretchen grit her teeth against the aches and stabs assaulting her like a swarm of invisible hornets. She remembered Sophie’s poppet tucked into the pocket of her borrowed trousers, but she had no pins. And no breath left as her body remembered exactly what it felt like to fall out of an apple tree in the family orchard.

“Don’t you remember?” Sophie explained with her pretty debutante smile. “I can revisit all of your past illnesses and injuries upon you. It’s much more useful than healing them, I can assure you. And once Emma is here to open the gate, this will all be over.” She watched Gretchen’s struggle, amused. “You might think you’re strong enough to ignore the pain, but when
all of those injuries hit you at once, you’ll do what everyone does. You’ll faint.”

“I never faint,” Gretchen replied, tasting copper and lemon balm.

“But what do you need with me?” Penelope croaked, trying to distract Sophie. “I can’t bring back the dead.”

“No, but you can tell me which are the bones of the Sisters in the Greymalkin ossuary. Lucius found Seraphine in Paris, but the others are in this house. I need them if they’re going to be more than mere spirits.”

“The Shakespeare book,” Penelope realized.

“I had to be sure your powers were strong enough,” Lucius said quietly, his breath stirring the hair on her neck.

“Spilling the wine on my gloves that night was no accident either.” She bit back tears. “How can you do this, Lucius?”

“You’re a romantic girl, Penelope. Surely you understand doing anything for love.”

“Not this,” she said. “Not murder.”

“I spent years searching for Seraphine’s bones, separated from Sophie. All to ease her grief. If this were one of your books, you’d call me the hero.”

“I’d call you a—” His thumb dug into her windpipe, cutting off her voice just as the First Legate arrived with a small unit of ash-and-soot–stained Keepers. They carried jet-inlaid wheel pendants, iron daggers, and spell bundles.

It wouldn’t be enough.

Other Keepers came out of the shadows to join Lucius. They stared straight ahead, weapons ready. They had the advantage,
by being completely indifferent to fighting their brothers. The others paused, confused. They were forbidden to fight each other. But Lucius’s Keepers weren’t bound by those laws anymore. And there were more of them.

And then Lord Mabon, the head of the Order.

And Theodora Lovegrove, Emma’s mother. She wore a ragged, torn dress and there were leaves in her black hair. Her eyes flashed.

“Where the hell is my daughter?”

Moira raced up the grand staircase, trying to see through the gloom and keep her footing. The fire was still contained to the ground level, but it raged unabated and it was only a matter of time before it nibbled up the steps and at the ceiling. Smoke pressed in on all sides, rising through the cracks in the floorboards.

Coughing, she kept climbing, keeping one hand on the wall. She’d never been inside a nobleman’s house before, but she imagined that attics were attics, no matter the neighborhood. She crossed acres of plush woven carpets to reach the servants’ stairs to take her to the top floor. It was cramped and crooked, the steps too narrow for her feet. She couldn’t imagine climbing them with a basket of laundry or coal. Better to live as a Madcap, ducking pigeons and Greybeards.

She smelled the smoke but it was thin enough that she could lower her cravat. She went through a maid’s bedroom and used the fire poker to smash the glass so she could climb out the
window. It was a simple thing to haul herself up over the overhang and grasp the railing. It was decorative iron, adorned and painted black even though she’d wager no one ever came up here. The household gargoyles had been beheaded, hulking bodies ending in jagged stone.

“Go on, Pip,” she urged. “Find the spell.”

The fat little gargoyle flew fast and deadly, suddenly fierce with his sharp teeth and curved talons. He circled the roof, dipping low and rising up again. He finally led Moira to the far corner.

On a round mirror sat a nest made of three yew twigs bound with red-and-black thread. In the center of the web sat a robin’s egg, blue as the summer sky. A circle of black salt surrounded it. When she went to brush it away, the grains flung themselves at her like stinging insects. Bloody marks rose instantly on her skin. Pip growled and snapped at the salt, plucking it out of the air like a toad with a swarm of flies. Moira rubbed feeling back into her numb fingers. When Pip had cleared the way, Moira undid the spell. She didn’t use fancy rhyme or herbs picked at midnight. She just used her boot.

She stomped down hard, breaking the egg and cracking the mirror into shards. She ground it into dust under her heel.

Below her, the fire had consumed too much of the house. She felt it shift as floors gave away. She clung to the railing, cursing. Smoke snuck between the shingles. Her feet burned. She couldn’t swing back down to the window. Flames licked the broken glass, cutting off her escape. She peered down the length
of the building to the flagstones below. An oak tree scraped its branches against the stucco.

She’d have to jump.

She leaped, soles of her feet prickling. She landed precariously, the branch dipping low under the sudden weight. She twisted and grabbed onto another branch, before the first could drop her. She pulled herself along to the trunk, the bark scraping the inside of her elbow and her jaw. Once she’d steadied herself, she climbed down into the ruins of the garden, darted over the wall into the lane, and ran right into Atticus.