Page 98 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
It must be! Can you do something?
I don’t know. I’m not sure I can—oh shit, she’s right there, she’ll see me—
Cordelia’s mind echoed with a scream she couldn’t voice. No! Penelope, don’t run away! You have to stop me!
Her body drew closer to Evermore. He turned his head and called “I found her!” to someone closer to the house, then turned back to her. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling. Surely blood had to be leaking out of her mouth. Surely he must see that something was wrong. “It was just a nightmare.” She took another step forward.
Cinnamon flooded her sinuses. I’m trying to grab the ropes but they’re like glue. You have to fight it!
Fight it? How did you fight something like this?
I fought back! She wanted me to stab him too and I wouldn’t! You can too!
Evermore’s eyebrows drew down and his mouth opened in surprise, but it was too little, too late.
Fight it! Penelope screamed in her head. Fight back! It’s your body, not hers!
But it is hers, Cordelia thought miserably, lifting the knife. She made it. She made me just like she made Falada, and she’s used my body whenever it was convenient. I’ve only been allowed to have it because she lets me.
You are not Falada!
Each word struck her like a blow, directly in the chest, where all her fear and hope and terror lived.
She was not Falada.
Falada had been her creature and when Cordelia had trusted him, he had gleefully betrayed that trust. But Hester and Imogene and Penelope had trusted Cordelia, and she had not betrayed them.
Even when her mother had gripped her chin and stared in her eyes and demanded truth, she had not betrayed her friends.
I am not Falada.
I am not her creature.
I do not belong to her.
The knife rose and Cordelia felt her muscles straining under her mother’s hand, eager to plunge it into Evermore’s throat. She knew that she could not turn it completely, but she threw every ounce of strength she had into lifting too far, too fast, and when it snapped forward, she turned her wrist.
Even that motion felt as if she had set her shoulder to a mountain, but the knife missed his throat. Instead the blade skidded upward. Too slow, Evermore threw up a hand. The tip tore a line across Evermore’s cheekbone and into his hair before he knocked it aside.
Blood poured down his face in a sudden torrent, just as it had from Old Bernard’s. He grabbed her wrists—Oh sure, now you do it, now that I’ve already stabbed you—and stared at her, blinking red out of his eyes. “Why?” he asked, sounding not so much mortally injured as baffled.
“Because it’s not her, you idiot!” Hester shouted, stomping across the lawn. “It’s her mother controlling her! I told you—oh dear god, Richard, your face!”
I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I did the best I could! Cordelia’s body stood motionless, not fighting the grip at all.
I know you did. I saw you.
“Damn it all,” her mother said from the edge of the wood. Her tone was mild and slightly exasperated. “I suppose if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
Hester had been waiting with Imogene on the stone patio—the same one, ironically, where they had been sitting when Falada attacked. Imogene had convinced her, barely, that she would be better off leaving the search to people with functional knees, but she didn’t have to like it.
The moment that she heard Cordelia call Richard’s name, though, she snatched up her cane and bolted. Imogene had gone in to get tea, and a moment later she heard her friend calling after her, but she was already hobbling as quickly as she could toward Richard.
That isn’t Cordelia. Cordelia never calls you anything but Lord Evermore.
She cast around desperately for another search party, but there were none nearby. Most of them had concentrated on the back of the property, near where the gamekeeper had been found. Blast. Hold on, Richard, the cavalry is coming as fast as it can…
