Page 104 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
Was the familiar fading somehow? Had Evangeline managed, at the end, to banish him after all? Or was this some kind of further transformation, into a monster made of teeth and crystal?
Please, god, let him not become invisible on top of everything else. None of us will stand a chance.
Falada moved. He was fading, Hester was almost sure of it. Parts of him were little more than suggestions of light in the air. But not fast enough.
Richard squeezed her hand fiercely and let it drop. He took a step forward, as if to meet the monster, and put up his fists in a useless schoolboy boxing stance.
“No,” Hester croaked through her raw throat. “Don’t—no—”
Falada charged.
Something honked. Loudly.
The fading familiar shied back as the short-legged gander flew into his face, wings beating madly. They struck the clear-glass legs and passed through them, as if Falada were made of jelly. The monster reared up, striking out with things that might have been mandibles or teeth or tongue. One caught the gander’s wing and sent him spinning out of control, to crash in the grass with a graceless squawk.
Falada turned back and his rib-cage mouth cracked even wider, and he lunged forward, a fraction too late.
His last cry turned to a whisper as daylight poured between his jaws, and the familiar was gone.
One Week Later
“So was that thing a demon, then?” Lord Evermore asked, as they all sat in the parlor together. The windows were open and the air of late spring—or possibly early summer—shone through. Cordelia could hear birds and, distantly, the shouts of the laborers restoring the road to the manor house.
Except for the massive scar down Evermore’s face and Hester’s new wheeled carry-chair, none of them looked different. Cordelia found that surprising, somehow. She felt about a thousand years old, and had been surprised that the face in her mirror still only looked fourteen.
Alice and Willard had a very brief scuffle over who was going to pour the tea, which Alice won, because butlers—even butlers officially on holiday—did not pour tea for maids.
“I don’t know if Falada was a demon,” Cordelia said, when the tea had been passed around. “He might have been. I’m afraid I really don’t know very much about sorcery, when you get right down to it. Moth… Evangeline… never told me much. I think she was afraid I’d try it myself.”
“Reasonably so,” said Imogene tartly. “If a ghost could see you, that probably means you had some kind of gift.”
“It’s gone now,” Cordelia said. “It went away along with everything else in the ritual.” She suspected that Imogene had not quite forgiven her for not telling anyone about Penelope’s presence. A week ago, she might have cringed away from the notion. Now she simply sipped her tea. She’d apologized, and there was no way to make amends now. She hoped that Imogene would forgive her someday. She owed the other woman far too much.
“At any rate,” Cordelia continued, “she did say that the spells on familiars were layered like an onion. So my guess is that the ritual pulled away the one that kept him looking like a horse, and then the one that made him obedient, and then finally the one that kept him here.”
“The last one took its own sweet time taking effect, then,” said Hester.
Cordelia frowned into her teacup. “Maybe,” she said slowly. “Or maybe Falada was trying to stay here as long as he could, and just ran out of strength.” She thought of Penelope trying to communicate with her, and how sometimes she would simply drop out completely, unable to stay in contact.
“For revenge,” suggested Imogene. “Well, I can see why he’d want all of us dead, particularly Richard. You did chop off his head.”
Richard smiled, then winced as his scar pulled a little. “I did.”
“What I don’t see is why he wanted to kill Evangeline so badly. He was her pet.”
“That was why, I think.” Cordelia set her teacup down, and was pleased that her hand barely shook at all. “I hated being obedient, but she only did it to me sometimes. Falada was obedient all the time. Maybe not quite the same way, but he was completely under her power. Not even his shape was his own.” She shook her head. “I hated him, but I feel sorry for him, too. I think he enjoyed some of the things she had him do, but he always wanted to get away. He just wanted to do as much damage as he could before he went.”
Hester grimaced. “I can’t feel sorry for him. That thing I saw at the end…”
“I was unconscious for that bit,” Cordelia admitted.
“Whatever it was, it sure wasn’t from around here,” said Alice. She shuddered. “I’m never going to stop seeing that thing. Those teeth—or whatever they were—ugh.”
Imogene snorted. “I imagine he thought we looked just as horrible, poor devil. Or demon, or whatever he was.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m going home tomorrow, to sleep in my own bed and listen to my own son talk my ear off about horses.”
“And what are you going to tell Lord Strauss?” asked Hester, smiling into her teacup.
“As much as I can without sounding like I’m raving. God knows how much that will be.” She shook her head. “Hester, my dear, the next time you throw a house party…”
