Court of Shadows, Page 2

Eager as I was to be away from her pinching fingers, I did not relish the thought of going downstairs and through the green door to see my employer. Our interactions had been mercifully few since my return from Ireland. In the hall I cowered like a wounded dog, glancing fitfully between Mrs. Haylam and the way to the stairs.

  She had already forgotten me, rounding on Chijioke, berating him for wasting time with silly serving maids in the library.

  I decided to flee before she caught me staring, and I whirled, retreating down the hall while holding my wounded ear. As I went, I saw what looked like a shadowy foot disappear around the corner, vanishing as whoever had been watching escaped up to a higher floor. The footsteps were already growing softer, but I knew them. Lee. Mary’s sacrifice and my decision had resurrected him, but in exchange, he lived with nothing but darkness fueling his spirit. I hardly understood it, and he was not amenable to discussing the changes he had undergone.

  Pausing, I listened to the footsteps as they diminished, pressing the spoon under my dress to my chest. I had doomed him, and I had doomed our growing friendship, too, souring it as I seemed to sour everything in my path.

  “Louisa! Downstairs! Now.”

  There was no room for argument in Mrs. Haylam’s voice. My many duties awaited, but first, I had the unenviable task of meeting Mr. Morningside once more.

  Chapter Two

  “Lovely Louisa, there you are.”

  He was in a disturbingly good mood. Every short glimpse of Mr. Morningside lately showed him to be irritable and vexed. Shouting matches raged at all hours between him and Mrs. Haylam. Complaints about noisy, lead-footed servants disturbing his work. And wasn’t the foyer awfully drafty? But now, sitting behind his massive desk, his menagerie of birds clustered around him, Mr. Morningside smiled at me. Brightly. Too brightly.

  I curtsied and waited for him to invite me to sit, which he did, giving a small, elegant wave of his hand. Reams of parchment that had seen much better days littered his office. Huge, leather-bound books were stacked high on the floor. Quills with broken nibs, their feathers splattered with ink, had been abandoned in every corner. He was hard at work at something, though nothing on the pages looked intelligible to me. Scribbles, I thought, unintelligible little pictures.

  He sat back in his chair while I took just the very edge of mine, my hands squeezing each other fretfully in my lap. I had yet to enjoy a wholly pleasant or even mundane interaction with this man . . . creature . . . thing. Given his too-friendly smile, this afternoon’s visit would be no different. Mr. Morningside cleared a space in the mess on his desk, haphazardly gathering up the old parchments and stacking them on the right side of the polished wood.

  “Tea? Something stronger? How are you enjoying the spectacle out on the lawn? It’s soon to be far more exciting. The Court convening here . . . It’s been, let me think—” And here he began tabulating silently on his long fingers. “Oh sod it, who knows? Who cares? It’s been a very long time, and now we are to host the Court. Such a delight.”

  “Forgive me for saying so,” I began carefully, “but you don’t look particularly delighted.”

  “Do I not?” He showed yet more white, even teeth with his next smile, but it only had the effect of being even more unsettling, forced. Aggressive. “Well, my questionable delight over hosting the Upworld’s finest fops and fools is a topic for another time, Louisa. We have far more pressing matters to discuss.”

  He served tea in his ornate cups, each decorated with tiny, fine birds. Without my asking him to, he also removed a round bottle of what looked to be brandy and poured some in with my tea, scooting it quickly across the table. Given the smell wafting off the cup, he had given me rather more brandy than tea.

  “It isn’t yet three o’clock,” I pointed out mildly, eyeing the concoction.

  Mr. Morningside tipped his head to the side, ceding the point, then took a gulp straight from the brandy bottle and tented his fingers in front of his nose, studying me. My mind raced. He was generally so unflappable. What could be upsetting enough to call for that much brandy this early in the day? Did it have something to do with Mary? Had she returned from the Dusk Lands after all? Or perhaps he had concerns about Lee, who had become like the house ghost, often heard but rarely seen. Then there was, of course, George Bremerton’s people, the cult of zealots that had sent Bremerton to Coldthistle in the first place with the mad idea of killing the Devil.

  I sighed and picked up the tea, waiting. What had my life become that these were the anxieties swirling around in my mind?

  “I’ve received a rather curious letter, Louisa. Quite honestly, I do not know what to make of it.” Mr. Morningside ruffled his luxuriant black hair and then reached for one of his desk drawers, withdrawing a folded piece of parchment with a broken green seal. Even at a distance, I could smell the distinct scent of juniper emanating from the paper. “It’s left me speechless.”

  “Now that is odd,” I mused.

  “Yes, yes, please enjoy a chuckle or two while you still can. I doubt you will feel so blisteringly superior when you hear the contents of the letter,” he said, his eyes, yellow and dancing, flamed with annoyance.

  Setting down the tea without drinking it, I frowned and reached for the letter, but he tugged it away, keeping it just out of my reach. A few of the birds perched around him tittered as if amused.

  “Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “You may read it soon, but first I must know something, Louisa.” Mr. Morningside leaned toward me, setting his jaw and grinding it back and forth a few times before saying softly, “How are you?”

  I stared. “How . . . am I? What sort of question is that?”

  “A friendly one,” he replied. “A genuine one. I realize I have been . . . preoccupied of late, but I do honestly worry. That ugly business with Bremerton would leave any normal person catatonic with shock. I know you must feel a certain amount of confusion still, what with Mary’s ritual not working. You appear to be taking it all in stride, but as you know, looks can be deceiving.”

  “I’m . . .” I cast about for a suitable response. It hurt to realize just how baffling that question could be. How was I? Unsteady, terrified, disheartened, utterly lost in a sea of strange forces and even stranger revelations about the world, about myself, about the nature of good and evil, God and the Devil. I was . . . “Getting along. Yes, I’m getting along, sir.”

  Mr. Morningside lifted one dark eyebrow at that. “A genuine question deserves a genuine answer, Louisa.”

  “Very well, then I’m surviving. I survive, usually by trying not to think too hard about what you are and what this place is. I clean the chamber pots and wash away blood. I sweep and muck out stalls and put my hands over my ears at night if a guest is screaming. If I thought too hard about any of it, about who I am and what I’ve seen and done after less than a year of employment here, then I might not appear to take it in stride. So while your question may indeed have been genuine, sir, it was also foolish.”

  My voice had risen to almost a shout, and I did not apologize for it, nor did Mr. Morningside seem taken aback or offended.

  He placed the letter on the desk between us, tented his fingers again, and nodded slowly, chewing briefly on his lower lip as he continued regarding me. His gaze flickered once to the letter, but then fixed on me. I refused to squirm under the scrutiny.

  “Would it please you to see your father?”

  I laughed. Scoffed, really, and gave a distinctly piglike snort. Pointing to the fine parchment of the letter, I said, “Malachy Ditton could never afford paper that fine. If he has, it’s a deception, some way to part you from your coin, and you’d be a dolt to believe a word of it.”

  Mr. Morningside’s eyes grew huge, almost innocently so, and his lips parted. “Oh.” Still looking dazed, he reached for the letter and began opening the creased pages, laying bare a long, long note written in a scrolling, beautiful hand. I had never seen letters with so many flourishes and loops. The entirety of it appeared to be
written in Gaelic.

  “My father can hardly scratch out his own name,” I murmured, transfixed by the sheer loveliness of the penmanship and that delicate perfume of juniper and forest drifting from the paper. My eye swept to the bottom and the signature, a name I did not recognize. It looked like Croydon Frost. “There must be some mistake . . .”

  “There is no mistake, Louisa,” Mr. Morningside said gently. “This letter is from your father. Your true father. Not a man of flesh and blood and mortal spirit but a Dark Fae, the source of your Changeling magic.”

  Chapter Three

  At once, I was a child hiding in the cupboard again. My stomach felt as if someone had thrown a sack of bricks into it. I had few memories of my father before he left, though the ones that remained were potent in all the worst ways. One could never forget the sound of a hard slap, or the mother’s grief that came afterward. I spent more time hiding from his moods and his drunkenness than I spent in his arms hearing stories.

  He did tell me one tale that stuck. “Remember, my girl,” he would say, bouncing me on his knee in one of his few moments of sobriety and kindness, “every man has his limits. From the smallest to the tallest, they all have a weakness. You have to know it, girl, but you have to know yours, too. See, I can drink one bottle of whiskey and keep my feet, but two more cups after that and bam! I’m on the floor. You drink the bottle and keep your feet. You don’t be tempted by those last two cups, you hear? See the wall before you crash into it.”

  “What a father,” I breathed. I had all but forgotten that I was not alone. Mr. Morningside stared at me, but I felt no pressure behind the look. At last I reached for my tea and drank it, all in one gulp, fighting back a cough from the heat of the liquid and the strength of the brandy.

  “Can I refuse to see him? Can you refuse him for me?” I asked, pushing the cup and saucer away from me.

  “Of course I can. Is that what you wish?”

  “I had one father already, and I can’t recommend the experience. How do I even know this one is telling the truth about our relation? It seems so . . . far-fetched.” But it would explain my odd abilities, which, one year ago, I would have found very far-fetched indeed.

  Mr. Morningside nodded, tapping the letter on his desk with one fingertip. “You aren’t curious to read what he has to say?”

  “Curious?” I searched the wall behind him, looking from bird to bird, watching them preen and sleep. “Morbidly so, perhaps, but I think I feel more . . . disappointed. The father I already have let me down, but I accept that now. I’ve worn that around and grown accustomed to the feeling. I don’t think I’d like to be let down that way again.”

  I pushed away from his desk and stood, aware suddenly that I felt dizzy. It wasn’t the brandy, or that wasn’t the only culprit. For so many years my father had railed against my mother, accusing her of all manner of ridiculous things. Foremost among them? Infidelity. And now here was proof that at least one of his suspicions was true. I shook my head, silently deciding that it wasn’t worth giving this stranger and his story too much credence.

  Why would anyone go to the trouble of finding you if it wasn’t the truth? Why would anyone care about a futureless, penniless daughter?

  “There is another possibility,” Mr. Morningside said quietly. I had already begun to leave, but I stopped and took a few tentative steps back toward him. He folded the letter neatly and held it out to me. “You might be pleasantly surprised. You might even find kinship with him, considering that you’re both of the Unworld.”

  “Or it’s just a bunch of nonsense and he’s some kind of criminal,” I replied. “Isn’t that more likely? Coldthistle House lures the wicked, you told me that yourself.”

  He inclined his head, still offering me the letter. “I’m familiar with the criminal set. Nothing in this note leads me to believe he has ulterior motives. He sounds quite educated, in fact,” he explained, pausing for effect. “And wealthy.”

  It was bait, and I was stupid enough to take it. No, not stupid, desperate. I still had little money to my name, only a scrimped pittance I’d saved from my wages. A wealthy father was what every poor girl hoped for, wasn’t it? Something out of a fairy tale. . . . I reached out for the letter but stopped, holding myself back.

  What about my life had ever been a fairy tale?

  “No,” I said, making a fist. “I don’t think I want it, not even if he’s the richest man in the kingdom.”

  “It’s not mine to keep,” Mr. Morningside pointed out. “Burn it, if that suits you better, but I think you should be the one to decide its fate. And your own.”

  My stomach throbbed again, and I blinked hard against the dizziness rising like a tide again in my head. I half expected the paper to burn my fingers when I touched it, but it was ordinary. Not that I took any comfort in that. Tucking the note into my apron, I curtsied and went to the door, eager to be alone, eager to dispose of the letter and never think of it again.

  “It’s silly anyway,” I said as I left. “I have no idea how to read Gaelic.”

  Behind me, Mr. Morningside laughed. I turned to find him cooing over one of his parrots, grinning, his old wry self returning. He seemed strangely satisfied. “You’re a clever girl, Louisa. I’m confident you’ll figure something out.”

  Chapter Four

  I had watched the commotion on the lawn from many different angles—my chambers, the library, the kitchens, the first-floor salon—but never from the roof. The thought of doing so then came only out of desperation. As I climbed upward through Coldthistle House, dodging distant voices so as to remain alone, I felt the panic subside a little, as if by leaving Mr. Morningside far below in his cave-like offices I could escape the tide of confusion altogether.

  The relief was only temporary, lasting through my search for a way out onto the upper battlements. I had not returned to the topmost floor of the mansion since my first ugly encounter with it; I knew that the Residents, the shadow creatures that haunted Coldthistle, lingered there in their greatest concentration. But they had been strangely absent from my life in recent months. A new fear struck me—that maybe their scarcity was somehow related to Lee’s death and subsequent return to life. After all, I had seen his shadow bleed back into his body, bringing with it breath and, seemingly, a second chance.

  And it had been Mrs. Haylam’s strange magic that had done so. I winced as I avoided the large ballroom-like expanse on the top floor and the evil book that resided within it—there was so much more to think about than just my “father’s” letter. Had I done the right thing by bringing back Lee—a decision that had resulted in the loss of Mary? Mary, whom I was still desperately hoping to bring back, too? I had gone to the magical spring in Ireland to make my wish that she return, but perhaps I had done something wrong. Or the magic hadn’t taken. Or I had misinterpreted entirely how I might bring her back again. . . .

  Ah, and then the sickness in my gut returned. I hurried down the hall, finding the air musty and warm up on this floor. A thin, rickety banister ran along the corridor, giving an open and dizzying view down to the levels below and the main foyer. Dust fell like soft snow from the rafters. The walls, decorated with Mr. Morningside’s paintings of reedy, gawping birds, were hung with a medieval tapestry that was rapidly disintegrating into faded tatters. The wood and stone behind were black with grime. Though I saw no shadow creatures as I scurried onward, I nonetheless felt their cold, unsettling presence. I was certain they watched; it was impossible to be alone in Coldthistle House.

  I at last reached a door, stooped and dark, with a decorated knob that looked like it had not been touched since its installation. The air around me felt too close, and I breathed hard as I took the little handle and tugged, expecting to find the door locked, and of course it was. Taking a step back, I closed my eyes, letting the ill feeling in my stomach do what it would. I needed that discomfort, that pain, and I focused hard on it, feeling it deeply, until it felt like the warm, dusty air was choking me.

&nb
sp; With one last deep breath, I wrapped my hand around the spoon hanging from my neck and pictured it becoming a key. A tiny key, decorative and old, one small and delicate enough to fit into the lock on this miniature door in front of me. My hand flashed hot, and when I opened my eyes there was just such a key nestled in my sweaty palm. I fit the key in the lock, wondering if it was even possible that I could conjure the correct thing. But I had.

  The room beyond opened to me after a few hard pulls on the door. It was a dirty, forgotten attic, crowded with moth-eaten linens and damaged furniture. One of the mansion’s many chimneys ran through it awkwardly, the brick body of it poking through the middle of the room. I scuttled through the attic without giving the mess a second look, spying another door on the far side, one with a grimy window peeking out into the open air.

  The small key I had conjured fit that lock, too, but the door wouldn’t budge. I gave the stubborn thing a shove, and then another, growing warmer and clammier as I put my shoulder to the wood and really pushed. The door swung open too quickly, and I tumbled out into the late-afternoon winds, finding the edge of the roof much too soon. I gave a short shriek of surprise, feeling nothing but the void as my forward movement sent me reeling over the slates.

  There was no banister to catch me. God, how could I be so stupid? My hands flailed in every direction, trying to find purchase, but it was too late. I was going to fall.

  And then I wasn’t. It happened in an instant, a strong arm hooking around my middle and yanking me back to safety. I screamed again, grabbing the arm at my waist and leaning back, sending us both sprawling onto the dark slant of the roof.

  I breathed heavily, closing my eyes, shifting to the side, and rolling off my savior. Leaning on my elbows, I looked up to find Lee, dressed in his shirtsleeves, staring down at me. That was almost as shocking as going end over end off the roof.