Page 87 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
The voice was loud and insistent and Cordelia was so very tired. The inside of her skull felt tender and raw. She rolled over in bed.
Cordelia! Am I doing this right? Oh blast, maybe I’ve forgotten how…
Her eyes snapped open. She knew that voice. “Penelope?”
Yes! Oh, thank god. I tried to talk to you last night—I think it was last night?—but you couldn’t seem to hear me.
The odd buzzing in her skull the night before suddenly made sense. Penelope had been trying to talk to her, and she’d been too exhausted to understand it.
“You came here!” Cordelia whispered. “I thought you were afraid you’d get lost!”
Yes, and with good reason. I did get lost. A cinnamon smell of distress filled Cordelia’s sinuses. I thought I could follow the horse again, if I stayed far back. He shines like anything. But that woman was on his back, and after—Lord, I don’t know how long—suddenly there were these strings coming out of her, wrapping around poor Samuel, and it was horrible. I got too close. I was trying to think if I could get the strings off him. But then it was like the church again, and she could see me, and I had to run away.
“She must have been ensorcelling him,” said Cordelia glumly. “Of course she doesn’t have to worry now, they’re already married, so there won’t be more water, wine, and salt.”
Seems likely. But once I bolted, I lost sight of the horse. Everything was just darkness, and sometimes little blobs, but they ran away when I came near. Animals, maybe.
I wandered like that for ages. How long has it been?
“A little over a week.”
That’s not so bad. Penelope laughed. I was afraid I’d be like one of those people who go to sleep in a fairy hill or under the waves and when they come back out, a hundred years have passed.
“Did you stumble in here by accident, then?”
No. I saw the… the ritual? The water, wine, and salt. It was so much louder than the one at the church. It blazed up like a burning city, and I saw it and went toward it. Another uneasy laugh. I was afraid to get too close to it, but it didn’t work, did it? Something went wrong. One of the notes was missing.
“The wine-note.” Cordelia tried to explain what she’d felt and what Imogene had said. “She thought—we thought—that Lord Evermore wasn’t able to do it. He was the wrong sort of person. But we don’t know who the right sort is.”
Of course he isn’t. If you need someone with wine in their soul, he’d be exactly wrong. He’s good and decent and reliable and if you told him that fun had been made illegal, he would bow his head and avoid ever having it again.
Cordelia choked on that description. “We need to find someone,” she whispered. She could hear Alice moving in the next room, and suspected that she was about to lose her chance to talk privately. “Can you see if anyone here is able to do it? Is that something you can tell?”
I don’t know, the ghost admitted. You all look like blobs to me. I suppose I could wander around and see if any of you are wine-flavored blobs, though.
“Do that,” Cordelia begged, and then the door opened and she had to turn it into a cough so Alice wouldn’t think she was talking to someone who wasn’t there. She suddenly missed the water closet enormously.
“You’re awake!” said Alice happily. “It’s nearly noon, miss—not that anyone is expecting you anywhere, not after what you did last night.”
What you did last night was a phrase that would strike terror into the heart of stronger mortals than Cordelia. She took a step back. “Last n-night?”
“You saving the old stablemaster!” Alice beamed. “It’s all anyone’s talking about belowstairs!”
“Um,” said Cordelia. “What… what are they saying?”
“That horse went mad and went for Old Bernard and tore him up good, and you threw yourself over him until the lads could pull the horse off!” She grinned, the grin of someone whose social currency has shot up remarkably in the last twelve hours. “You’re a hero, miss!”
“Oh god no,” said Cordelia.
“Oh yes.” Alice tackled her scalp with the hairbrush. “And here was me thinking last night that you’d been running through the woods and rolled through the mud. You might’ve said!”
“It wasn’t like that,” Cordelia protested. “I knew the horse, that was all. It wasn’t… I didn’t…” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Is Old Bernard all right?”
“Oh, they say he’s made out of wire and rawhide. He looks a sight, but Charlotte, who’s stepping out with the second groom, she says the doctor stitched him up and as long as he doesn’t get lockjaw, he’ll just be short an ear.”
Lockjaw. Could a familiar transmit lockjaw? Cordelia had no idea. It didn’t seem like they should be able to.
By the time she was dressed and had a moment of privacy on the stairs, the ghost no longer answered her whispers. Cordelia went down to breakfast, trying to figure out the best way to explain to the others about Penelope.
