A Breath of Frost

  For my mother. Je t’aime.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part 1 Untested

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part 2 Unbound

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part 3 Uncovered

  Chapter 46

  Part 4 Unbroken

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also by Alyxandra Harvey

  Prologue

  1814

  Breaking into a dead woman’s house was easy work since she rarely complained.

  Breaking into a dead witch’s house was a different matter altogether.

  You were as likely to come across some bit of wandering magic as a weeping relative pacing the floor. When a witch died, many of her spells unraveled and the results were unpredictable at best. Moira might get lucky and the house wards would break first. On the other hand, Mrs. Lawton’s ghost might push her down the stairs.

  She’d have to risk it. One-Eyed Joe wanted what was inside, even if he didn’t know it yet. And the old lady’s body would be hauled off to the cemetery tomorrow. Moira had no intention of becoming a grave robber.

  Moira stayed crouched on the roof next door for over an hour, watching carefully as a household lamp was carried from room to room. The gargoyle on the corner of the Lawton house was draped in black bombazine, like the mirrors inside would be. Mourning extended to all parts of the house, and the ghost was expected to protect its family while the gargoyle slept.

  Finally, the lamplight floated upstairs. She waited an hour after it was extinguished, just to be safe. She wished she had Strawberry with her, but her friend was off on another job. And if she took one of the boys they’d want the bigger cut just for being there. Even though Moira had been stealing things to sell at the market since she was nine years old, and some of those boys barely had a year under their belts.

  She hopped over the gap between the roofs and slid down a drainpipe to the parlor window on the north side of the building. It was customary to leave it open for the spirit to pass through. Moira didn’t mind sharing with a ghost; she was used to sharing the rooftops with vampire pigeons, rats the size of hedgehogs, and Nigel the snorer. She left a muffin on the sill as an offering. Mrs. Lawton might have preferred wine or sweets as many spirits did, but Moira only had one lemon-drop candy left and she wasn’t about to give it up for a dead woman with no taste buds.

  She wiggled inside, grateful poor girls didn’t have to wear corsets, and Madcaps didn’t even have to wear dresses. Her trousers were frayed in one knee and two sizes too big, but they were comfortable and allowed her to move in ways that would have snapped the spines of soft aristocratic girls.

  The house smelled like whiskey, cheap lamp oil, and a dead body. There was no odor of lemon balm, which was a relief. Warlocks smelled like lemon balm, so she knew for sure that she was stealing from a regular witch. Warlocks just weren’t worth the risk. They were ruthless in life and worse in death.

  Moira paused, waiting for her vision to adjust to the gloom and assessing her surroundings. The protective eyes painted on the thresholds and over the lintels were draped in black material, just like the gargoyle had been. There was the usual assortment of chairs and trinkets. She didn’t know how people lived in such close quarters with so much clutter. She hated the feeling of being inside a building, without a view of the sky or seven different escape routes at all times. Moira’s feet burned, the way they always did when she was courting trouble. She tried to ignore it, reminding herself the walls were soft enough to kick through, if worse came to worst.

  She knew the upstairs had two rooms and the attic was full of mice. She’d sent her familiar inside earlier in the day, just to be sure. Having a cat as a fetch was infinitely more practical than the wolves and eagles the fancy witches coveted. They might be more romantic than an alley cat, but you couldn’t exactly send your wolf-familiar into the body of a real wolf in London to any reasonable purpose, could you? Cats, on the other hand, were everywhere and rarely noticed.

  A scrawny russet tabby with a bent ear leaped out of Moira’s rib cage. The fiery pinpricks in her heels subsided to a low warning itch. The first time she’d felt Marmalade leave her body, Moira had thrown up. And then spent the night crying because she thought she was going crazy. One-Eyed Joe found her and fed her mint tea and told her stories about witches and magic. He’d taught her to avoid the Order and never sell to a warlock without a disguise and that her familiar was her closest ally, literally created out of her own magic.

  Marmalade swiped at her leg with a ghostly claw. Blood welled on the scratch.

  “You know, Strawberry’s familiar is a little white mouse. She brings her flowers.” Marmalade knew full well that Strawberry’s familiar was a mouse; keeping the two apart was a constant struggle.

  Magic clung to the cupboard on the wall and billowed like pink steam out of a teapot. Old lady Lawton was a tea-leaf reader and she’d protected the tools of her trade and the magical artifacts in her home from tampering and theft. Luckily, Moira wasn’t interested in those.

  She crept forward to the dining table. It was covered in a white sheet on which Mrs. Lawton lay in her best dress. Her gray hair was curled and a silver brooch was pinned to her collar. Moira left the pin even though it would have fetched a decent price. It wasn’t what she was after and it felt rather rude, considering.

  She gently pried Mrs. Lawton’s eyelids open. They felt like stiff paper. Her right eye was cloudy and vacant, her left perfectly clear and blue as cornflower petals.

  The glass eye of a blind witch three days dead.

  She popped it loose, trying very hard not to hear the vile popping sound it made when it came free. She tucked it into the pocket of her striped green waistcoat, refusing to gag.

  She placed a coin over the eye socket, as payment. It wasn’t stealing if you paid for it. And, if you believed in the old stories, you had to have a coin to pay your way to the other side. She hoped it would appease the ghost long enough for Moira to slip out the window.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Mrs. Lawton’s spirit sat straight up out of her body and sc
reeched.

  “Thief! Thief in the house!”

  “Bollocks!” Moira jumped a good foot into the air and then stumbled back against the wall, gasping. Bloody ghosts. Marmalade hissed, fur rising like a boot brush. When no one came running to investigate, Moira released her breath.

  Mrs. Lawton didn’t drift forward like pollen or moonlight or any of the things poets claimed. Ice skittered over the floor-boards as she slammed into Moira, mouth opening wide to show rotted teeth. Her breath was toads and mushrooms and mildew.

  Moira clamped between her teeth an iron nail she’d dug out of a rafter. The iron helped, but it didn’t banish Mrs. Lawton completely. The ghost’s hand closed around Moira’s throat. Her touch burned even as frost filled the space between them.

  Mrs. Lawton shouldn’t have been able to do that, even as a recent ghost. There were wards over London. Locks on mystical gates and portals. Binding spells. The Order.

  Mrs. Lawton didn’t seem to care for any of those fail-safes.

  And for a dead old lady, she packed quite a punch.

  Moira’s feet felt branded, as if she didn’t already know she needed to get out of here. Now. She was weak as boiled turnips. Her vision started to go gray and blotchy.

  Marmalade knocked the teapot over. The handle cracked ominously.

  Mrs. Lawton turned her phosphorescent head so quickly her neck snapped.

  Marmalade batted the teapot as if it were Strawberry’s mouse, rolling it closer and closer to the edge of the sideboard. Mrs. Lawton’s grip loosened. She ground her teeth so savagely, one fell out and corporealized when it hit the ground.

  Marmalade flicked the teapot once more and as it tumbled, Mrs. Lawton lunged for it, momentarily forgetting Moira. Moira scooped up the dead woman’s tooth and tucked it next to her glass eyeball before diving out of the window. She scampered up the first drainpipe she found, flattening herself onto the roof to catch her breath. Her black hair tangled around her, catching in the shingles. A neighbor thundered out of his door in his nightshirt.

  When Marmalade jumped up beside her, Moira rolled over onto her feet, brandishing a dagger. The cat calmly licked her paw. Moira let out a shaky laugh. “That did not go as planned, Marmalade,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  She walked the ridge like a circus girl, balancing lightly and keeping her chin high. When she reached the edge she turned right, intending to head home.

  Pain gnawed at her, as if her boots were full of angry bees.

  She stumbled to a stop, cursing. She wanted to go to her favorite summer rooftop made of slate tiles that held the heat pleasantly. There was even a spot of thatch she’d used to plug up a hole that made for a fine pillow. She kept excellent care of the roofs, as all Madcaps did. A leak meant ladders and repairmen and sometimes the Order’s Greybeards with their spells and pointy swords. But without a reason to look up, most shop owners didn’t have the time to bother, at least in the East End.

  It was different in Mayfair, where rooftops were spelled to keep Moira and her kind away and gargoyles crouched, stuffed with magic. Madcaps had long learned the trick of pacifying gargoyles, if nothing else. And anyway, Moira preferred the East End. Home was home, whatever it smelled like. And however many hungry, crazy ghosts roamed.

  And it was safer here, so long as she kept to the chimney pots and the shingles. Mrs. Lawton couldn’t follow, not while her body still lay in state. And the other Madcaps left symbols scratched into the tiles, warning of unsteady roof timbers, vermin, Greybeard patrols, and recruiting men. They were even worse than the ladies who came with baskets for the poor and pamphlets about the dangers of living on the street. As if any of the street urchins, Madcaps, or regular orphans ever chose St. Giles or Whitechapel because it was the better alternative. Just ask her brother.

  Before the Order had caught him.

  A flock of vampire pigeons circled overhead, sending children below shrieking for cover. Moira wasn’t worried. Madcaps never fretted over the pigeons. They’d trained them with bloody leavings from the butcher stalls at Leadenhall market. It was one of their few weapons against the Greybeards and even occasionally, the ordinary night watchmen. London was not kind to the poor or the supernatural.

  She preferred to control her own life even if it meant sleeping wrapped around a chimney pot for warmth. Dirt and cold rain didn’t scare her, not like having her essence trapped in a Greybeard’s bottle.

  And she didn’t particularly like Mayfair, which was fine since its inhabitants loved it enough for everyone.

  Which made her wonder why she was now running toward it.

  But she’d learned, even before Mrs. Lawton, that when the bottoms of her feet itched the way they did right now, she ignored them at her peril. The last time she’d ended up dodging the nightwatch for an hour and a half after she was caught with a handful of stolen pocket watches. The Order might claim you, but the nightwatch could clap you in irons and shuffle you into a poorhouse. She shuddered at the thought and kept running, her trousers rolled above her ankles and her boots marked with sigils for speed. She stayed well south of Newgate prison, raced past courtesans waiting outside the theater on Drury Lane and along the Strand to Pall Mall.

  All because her toes itched.

  The alleys between buildings widened. She left the shops that tilted together like dandies holding each other up after drinking themselves sick. She ran until the worn shingles turned to copper flashing and marble columns. The clubs and shops were made of white stone, gleaming like bones. She wanted to stop on one of the flat roofs to catch her breath, but pain stabbed up her ankles and all the way to her knees when she paused too long.

  It only receded when she kept moving, kept running, and only toward Grosvenor Square of all places, all mansions and columns and balconies. A single mansion could have taken up an entire block in Whitechapel. They were fit for aristocrats and royalty, not Madcap girls dressed as boys with pockets full of stolen goods. The gargoyles became elaborately carved art in rose-colored stone and marble, not river clay fired in a coal grate. They still stank of magic though, that curious mixture of fennel seeds and salt.

  She kept running, though she didn’t know why.

  Until she turned around.

  She slid down the pitched roof of a window overhang and dangled off the edge, her fingers cramping as she struggled to hold on. Not precisely an improvement.

  But what could you expect from magic that made your feet itch?

  The sigils painted on her boots gave her cat’s feet on the rooftop, but they weren’t enough to make her fly. Not only were her arms screaming, but if someone happened to look out of the window, she’d be hauled off to prison as a housebreaker. Gritting her teeth, she swung herself like a church bell, back and forth, back and forth, until she’d gained enough momentum to let go. Flying, it turned out, felt a lot like falling. She hit the steep roof of a stable, landing with a painful thud that made her wince. The neighbor’s poodle began to bark.

  All around her came the cracking of stone and the splintering of shingles. She heard it even over the clatter of carriage wheels on the street below, the restless horses in the stable, and an orchestra playing music for the fancy folk. They danced while overhead, the magic wards they didn’t even know protected them, broke.

  Gargoyles of all shapes and sizes, all sneers and smiles, deserted their posts. A few crumbled to dust but most—too many—launched off roof points, dormer windows, and rain spouts. They took to the air, the stretch and flap of their wings leathery and brittle. They cast off pieces of shingle and stone all over London. Moira had never seen anything like it.

  With the gargoyles gone, the rooftops weren’t safe.

  London wasn’t safe.

  Part 1

  Untested

  Chapter 1

  It was the most boring event of the Season.

  Emma was promised dashing young gentlemen in starched cravats dancing until dawn, and kisses in dark gardens. Instead, there were only whiskered old widow
ers in creaking stays who smelled like lavender water and arthritic cream, and more wall-flowers than seats. As if being a wallflower wasn’t bad enough, being forced to stand in uncomfortable shoes that pinched while debutantes cast her pitying glances—and the few young men cast her none at all—was so much worse.

  She longed for the forests of Berkshire and the stars overhead. She stifled a yawn since her chaperone, Aunt Mildred, would lecture her all the way home that yawning was neither pretty nor polite behavior. Neither was tapping one’s foot to the music, eating too many pastries off the buffet table, or laughing loudly. In short, anything remotely amusing. Worse yet, Gretchen was hiding in the library and Penelope was in the garden with the very handsome and muscular Mr. Cohen. Penelope somehow managed to consistently flirt with social scandal and skip away unscathed. But that left Emma alone, once again.

  If only Lord Durntley would trip on his way to ogle Lady Angelique’s bosom. If only he’d crash into the footman and toss the tray of custard tarts so it could land on Lord Beckett’s abysmal toupee.

  If only something interesting would happen.

  She leaned against the wall, even though young ladies weren’t supposed to lean, slouch, or otherwise bend. With nothing left to distract her, she took the small bottle out of her reticule, winding the ribbon around her finger and letting the candlelight shine through its murky depths. It was rather strange-looking to be jewelry and didn’t appear to contain any kind of perfume Emma would ever want to smell, let alone smear on her wrists, but it was the only thing she had of her mother’s. She carried it as a sort of talisman.

  She’d only actually seen Theodora Day, Lady Hightower, three times in her entire life. Three identical Christmas mornings at their country estate, chaperoned by the housekeeper, five footmen, and a great-uncle she hadn’t seen since. Each time, her mother sat in a chair by the window, staring at the woods, pale as the snow outside. She hadn’t even blinked when Emma approached to sing her a carol. She never spoke, except to scream the one time Emma tried to hold her hand.

  Four debutantes drifted Emma’s way, giggling and trailing chaperones and admiring younger sons of earls and viscounts. “Lady Emma,” Daphne Kent simpered formally, even though their families were friendly and they’d known each other since they were children. Now that they were out in society, they were meant to acknowledge each other with long boring titles and curtsy and talk about nothing at all. “What a unique bauble.” Her eyes sharpened. Emma had no idea why. She’d never been interesting to Daphne, and likely never would be.