Lily Read online

‘Marten hardly ever goes to the kitchens, or the servants’ hall. She eats in her room, which is joined to Mama’s. And you saw her just now, she wears that veil around her head. The others servants say it’s because she’s Talish, and it’s a fashion, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s so you’d have to look closely to see her eyes at all.’ She lifted Henrietta onto her lap, and stroked her, over and over, calming herself as her fingers ran down the strange, smoothly rough fur. ‘I try not to think about her, mostly. Do you think she’s under a spell?’

  Henrietta shivered. ‘No. I think she is a spell.’

  ‘She’s made of magic?’ Lily whispered, amazed. ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

  ‘Most people can’t. It’s not the sort of magic that any common-or-garden magician could manage. Arabel’s father was a very learned sort of magician – he didn’t do spells very often, although he could, when he wanted. Mostly he wrote about spells. And talked! On and on… Especially at lunchtime. But it was useful, sometimes. I remember him talking about spell creatures. Very, very difficult magic. And dangerous. I hadn’t realised quite how strong your mother must be.’ Henrietta looked suddenly mournful. It was an expression that suited her wrinkles. ‘I was unkind to your sister. She is right to be so scared.’

  ‘Really? She isn’t just being feeble then?’ Lily asked, in a small voice.

  But Henrietta was suddenly pressing back against the window glass, her lips raising over her white teeth in a silent growl. Someone was coming out.

  Lily strained her eyes, as if she could see through the dusty velvet if she tried hard enough. Even then, hiding behind a curtain from a spell-creature, her heart gave a sudden little bounce of excitement. Maybe she could? Every so often she would remember the magic that had brought her Henrietta and turn dizzy with happiness. It was mixed with a kind of delicious terror, but Lily knew she never wanted to give it up.

  Lily could hear footsteps, and her mother’s low, musical voice. Then the footsteps pattered towards the door again, it opened, and Mama sailed through, with Marten following her close behind.

  Lily dug her fingers into the crumbling wood of the window frame, to stop herself toppling out onto the floor in front of her mother. It was as though she was a magnet, and Lily a thin little pin, dragged towards her by a pull of painful spells. She wrapped the other arm around Henrietta, as the little dog’s claws were squeaking along the painted wood, her eyes bulging at Lily in horror.

  Only the merest hint of a paw slid out from behind the dark velvet, but it was enough that Marten’s veiled head snapped round as she passed. Lily could feel the stony eyes scanning the window, and pressed herself even further into the corner, so close she was sure she could feel the grain of the wood imprinting her skin. Perhaps Marten would think it was only a mouse, she prayed, as the pull of Mama’s magic died away.

  There was a second’s pause in the tapping footsteps over the stone, a faint hissing sound – and then they carried on, and Lily breathed.

  The door creaking open again made them both jump, and Georgie’s face appeared round it, looking anxious. ‘Are you there, Lily?’

  Lily unfolded herself creakily from behind the curtain, and stepped out, Henrietta in her arms.

  The pug was licking her paws frantically, as though she felt they might have been contaminated with something. ‘She is horrible!’ she hissed. ‘I do not understand how the two of you could have such an unpleasant mother!’ She glared suspiciously at Georgie. ‘Or how you’ve managed to remain so comparatively – clean.’

  Lily slipped into the library, and shut the door behind them, leaning against it and trying to catch her breath. Her heart was racing, and the air in the library seemed thick and dusty, so her breath came in unsteady gulps.

  ‘It’s the magic,’ Georgie told her. ‘It’s even in the air in here. Breathe through your mouth – it helps, till you get used to it.’

  Henrietta had wriggled down, and was trotting about the library, sniffing busily. When Merrythought had been a grand house, a place where magicians from all over the country, the world even, had gathered, the library had been their meeting place. It was the largest room in the house, even larger than the grand hall, and it ran through all the way to the back of the house, at almost double height, with a stained glass dome in the ceiling, surrounded by a little gallery. Lily had hardly ever been in it. She always wondered how the room managed to be so dark, despite all that glass, and the huge windows that looked out onto the old rose garden – which was a dandelion garden more than anything these days. But now she could see the magic swirling in the air, like dust motes in the sun, hazing everything.

  ‘Georgie, did you know that Marten wasn’t real? Henrietta says she’s made of magic!’

  Georgie shook her head. ‘I don’t think that’s possible.’

  ‘It is, and she is,’ a little growly voice called back from inside one of the little bays of books that went around the walls. ‘Although I suppose it might not have been your mother who created her.’ She popped her head back around the shelves. ‘She smelled of your mother’s magic though, I think. Musky.’

  ‘Why couldn’t Mama just have a normal lady’s maid?’ Georgie sat down, as though her legs had given way under her. ‘I can’t even imagine the spells you’d need to do that! Where would you even start?’

  Lily perched on the table next to her. ‘With a body? Perhaps the spell’s in one of these books.’ They were everywhere – piled on the tables, spilling out of the shelves, even on the windowsills. The room stank of magic, and mouldy paper.

  ‘A body!’ Georgie stared at her in horror. ‘Mama wouldn’t! Would she?’

  Lily swallowed. ‘I only meant that I would start by trying to make the body… Did you think…? You really thought Mama might have stolen one from somewhere?’

  Georgie shook her head. ‘No. You thought it. I’m sure she wouldn’t. I never said that!’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.’ Henrietta had jumped from a large magical lexicon which had been abandoned on the floor, onto the chair next to Georgie’s. Now she sat neatly curled on the embroidered cushion, watching Lily and Georgie with her head turned sideways. She seemed to think they were rather amusing. ‘It might not have started as a human body, of course. Not that Marten’s even human now.’

  ‘Did Great Aunt Arabel do that sort of thing?’ Georgie asked, fascinated.

  ‘Certainly not! Only the very worst kind of magician would.’ She turned her head over to the other side, slowly. ‘You do realise this, don’t you? That your mother is terribly dangerous.’

  Lily frowned. She was frightened of her mother – she always had been, as far as she could remember, but she was rather proud of her at the same time. Things she had always known and understood seemed to be disappearing away from her all of a sudden. It was like standing on the sandy part of the beach, and feeling the sea rush in and steal the sand from between your toes.

  ‘Is she really bad?’ she whispered miserably, hoping that Henrietta might laugh, and say, Of course not, only a little.

  Henrietta said nothing for a moment, pawing at her nose nervously. Then she sighed. ‘I only knew Arabel until she was just a little older than you, Georgiana, but your family then were very different. They were strong magicians, but even so, they kept away from the darker spells, although Arabel’s father loved to talk about them. Arabel and her sisters were taught the subtler sorts of magic. Glamours. Illusions. Twisting the weather. I’m not surprised she became a weather worker. Her spells always went wrong, but she had a talent for it, even then. The kind of thing your mother is doing is much more dubious. And half the books in this room should be under lock and key.’

  Georgie was frowning. ‘You don’t know Mama. I don’t see how you can say that sort of thing.’

  Lily was so surprised she laughed, startled into agreeing with Henrietta after all. Of course the little dog was right. ‘Georgie, she’s had you under a spell so deep you practically forgot who I was! How
can there possibly be a good reason for that?’

  ‘Your sister has been with your mother a great deal more than you have,’ Henrietta said slowly, leaning closer to Georgie, and sniffing her suspiciously. ‘It would be odd if she hadn’t imbibed rather more of her magic – and her morals – than you. And she’s probably still wrapped in the rags of that spell, too.’

  ‘Stop sniffing me!’ Georgie snapped.

  ‘Was it cast in here, I wonder?’ Henrietta turned her head to the other side again – it seemed to be what she did when she was particularly deep in thought. ‘That would explain why she’s slipping away again.’

  ‘I’m not!’ Georgie’s eyes were blazing now. ‘Really, you are the rudest creature I’ve ever met! And Mama has shown me several elemental creatures who were quite disgusting, I promise you!’ She swallowed. ‘I know Mama is planning something, and it’s bad. But it’s all I’ve ever been meant to do, Lily. It’s like a rug being pulled out from under my feet – everything I know has changed, in less than a day.’ She wrapped her arms around herself, and shivered. ‘And you’re right,’ she admitted grudgingly to Henrietta. ‘It is harder in here. The spell’s still in the air, I’m sure, and it makes me want to do as I’m told.’

  ‘Then we need to hurry and find – whatever it is we’re looking for.’ Lily stood up, looking around helplessly.

  They walked around the library for a few minutes, Lily taking out a book here and there, and glancing through it. At last she sank down in a corner of one of the bays with a hopeless sigh. ‘This was a stupid idea! I thought it would be easier to find – as if they were going to leave a big piece of paper pinned up with My Evil Plan written across the top. There must be a thousand books in here, at least, and any of them might hold the spells that she wants you to do.’

  ‘I don’t think we ought to be looking for a book.’ Georgie was standing at the desk that was drawn up to the window. ‘This is where Mama sits to write. Shouldn’t we be looking for something she’s written down?’ Then she turned back to Lily and made a face. ‘I see what you mean. Something that says My Evil Plan on it. Oh, maybe it is stupid.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Henrietta had clambered onto one of the low shelves, and had been working her way around, sniffing curiously at the books, and sneezing disgustedly whenever she came to a particularly pungent one. ‘After all, why would she need to hide her plans? She still thinks you are under a spell, Georgiana, and it seems to me, Lily, that she’s entirely forgotten that you exist.’ She had reached Lily’s corner now, and she licked the tip of her ear sympathetically. ‘Which is a very good thing. Anyway, if she has written anything, she might well have left it lying around.’

  ‘Does she sit anywhere else?’ Lily asked.

  Georgie glanced around. ‘Sometimes she sits in that armchair, over there. Or else she prowls about and creeps up behind me to tell me I’m doing something wrong.’

  The armchair was drawn up close to the library fire, and books and papers were scattered all around it. It was upholstered in some dark, slightly shining fabric that reminded Lily of one of Mama’s dresses. It smelled of her too, that strange musky smell that Henrietta had noticed in the magic around Marten. It was like one of the hot spices that Mrs Porter kept in earthenware jars on the dresser. No one was allowed to touch them, as they came from the East, and were expensive. Lily crept up on it sideways, and then felt foolish for being frightened of a chair.

  Georgie was sorting through the papers on the desk, trying not to disarrange them too much and make it obvious they had been snooping.

  ‘These are all about the old magical families…’ she murmured. ‘And a spell for planting seeds inside people – ugh, why on earth would Mama want to do that?’

  Lily tiptoed around the armchair to look at the collection of odd things on a little piecrust table that stood next to the chair. A decanter of some strange dark cordial – which she had no desire to taste – a broken ivory and silver comb, and a book, covered in dull emerald leather. It was a fat little book, with worn golden lettering on the front. Lily had to frown to make it out, and at last she picked it up to see it properly.

  Photographic Album, it read, in flowing, decorative letters.

  A little card slipped out, painted with brownish, faded flowers, and a message in spidery writing. For my dear niece Nerissa, on the occasion of your wedding day. Nerissa was her mama’s name.

  Lily opened it gently, turning the brittle pages. The first photograph was a wedding portrait, with Mama seated on a spindly little chair, and Father behind her, looking rather grim. Lily stroked one finger gently over him – Mama had a painting of him, in a locket on her dressing table, but Lily had never seen it. Swallowing a little, she realised that if this man hadn’t been pictured with Mama, she might have thought he was a stranger.

  Frowning at the photograph, Lily decided that the odd-shaped bit of column they had been posed in front of was actually part of the gazebo at the centre of the sea of dandelions outside the library windows. Merrythought had still been rich and smart-looking then, even though the Decree had already come into force. The date written underneath was June, 1865 – twenty-five years ago.

  ‘What is it?’ Georgie asked, coming to look over her shoulder.

  ‘Portraits – look, their wedding.’ She turned the page. ‘And Mama with a baby. Oh! This is Lucy. And she was born only a year after they were married – she would be twenty-four now, if she hadn’t died…’

  Henrietta leaped up onto the armchair to see the pictures too. ‘How very interesting. Arabel and her sisters went to an exhibition of daguerrotypes in London once, and took me, but I have never seen anything like these. They all look rather miserable,’ she added, wrinkling her nose as Lily turned the pages on several pictures of girls around her own age.

  ‘You have to stand very still,’ Georgie explained. ‘That’s why everyone always seems grumpy. It takes ages.’

  ‘Lucy and Prudence,’ Lily muttered, turning the pages. ‘They were older than me, I think. They weren’t babies when they died, Georgie. More your age, at least.’ She bit her lip, glancing up at Georgie worriedly.

  ‘Children die sometimes too.’ Georgie’s voice was stubborn. Then she sighed. ‘But not two of them, surely? Unless they had typhoid, perhaps? But it would be terribly unlucky, to take both girls.’

  ‘It didn’t happen all at once, anyway. Lucy’s gone in this one, see – it’s only Prudence, and that must be you she’s holding, Georgie,’ Lily murmured.

  ‘No photographs of any of them aged much older than you.’ Henrietta nosed one of the pages to turn to the next portrait – Prudence, her light hair in long, soft ringlets. She looked as though she had been very well-named, her face sweet and biddable-looking. In fact, she looked remarkably like Georgie. Even down to the worried, frightened look in her eyes. She was holding the baby this time, a pretty fair-haired little lump. Prudence seemed to be eyeing her rather anxiously, but Lily wasn’t sure if that was her imagination.

  ‘She knows,’ Henrietta muttered, and Lily shivered. Not her imagination then.

  ‘The rest of it is empty,’ she said, flicking through the fraying pages. ‘Oh, except there’s a pocket at the back.’ She unfolded the little envelope, and drew out a piece of paper, which seemed much newer than the rest of the album. It was written in the darkest blue ink, in her mother’s tight, spiky writing. ‘It’s a list of spells, I think,’ she said doubtfully, handing it to Georgie.

  ‘Yes.’ Georgie frowned. ‘All horrible ones. Just reading the names of them makes me shiver.’

  ‘Show me,’ Henrietta asked, scrambling up into Lily’s arms and leaning over. ‘Ugh. Not just horrible. I’ve heard of some of these. They’re for killing people.’

  Georgie shook her head. ‘No. No, some of them are dangerous, but they can’t be for that. This one definitely isn’t, look. I know this one. I’ve done it. I think.’ She pointed to one of the lines halfway down the list.

  Lily stared at her sister, w
ide-eyed, and Henrietta froze in her arms. ‘Look at what it says underneath,’ she growled softly.

  Georgie glanced at them both crossly, and read out, ‘Steals the breath and thins the blood. Eventually effective but rather slow.’

  ‘Who did you cast it on?’ Lily whispered, the words sticking in her throat.

  ‘I – I don’t know. Mama just told me to practise it, and I still can’t remember properly…’ Georgie dropped the piece of paper, and seemed to sway on her feet, clutching at the back of the chair to hold herself up. ‘Have I killed somebody?’

  Henrietta stared at her for a moment. ‘I should think that depends on how well you did the spell.’

  Georgie swallowed. ‘She was very cross about it. She said I was useless. Oh, then perhaps I didn’t! I can’t have done… Can I?’

  ‘Have you learned any more of them?’ Lily asked, handing her back the piece of paper.

  ‘Yes… This one. And this. About half the list, I think. But only to study. They’re all such difficult ones. They need a lot of magic, and training, and even then it’s a knack, I think. I haven’t cast any of the others, I’m not even ready to try.’ For the first time, Georgie looked relieved that she wasn’t as good at magic as everyone wanted. ‘Lily, Mama is teaching me to kill people,’ she said flatly. And then she collapsed into the armchair, looking sick. ‘I don’t want to kill people… Who would?’ She huddled back into the chair, small and lost against the cushions.

  ‘Your mother, clearly,’ Henrietta muttered, sniffing at the list, and sneezing as though it were peppery. ‘Ugh…’

  ‘I think it’s one person.’ Lily pointed to another spell. ‘Look what she’s written underneath this one. Too hard to reach her. These are all designed for one person in particular.’

  Georgie frowned, and sat up. ‘Is this how they did away with Lucy and Prudence and the others? Mama’s trying to get me to learn spells to get rid of myself? That doesn’t make sense.’

  Lily shook her head. ‘No. Think about it. Her. The one person Mama can’t stand. The one who destroyed everything for us.’