Phoenix and Ashes (58 page)

Finally,
she put on the clean clothing, spread out the pallet-bed, and fell onto it. She
felt as if she wanted to weep. All that work—and for nothing! All she had
done was to allow herself to be distracted by Reggie and betrayed by her
emotions. She hadn’t found the Air Master. She was no nearer to freeing
herself than she had been this morning.

As
for Reggie—if he dared to come looking for her here—Alison would
want to know why, and then—

Unbidden,
the image of the Wheel of Fortune card rose in her mind. A few hours ago, she
had been up, up, up—now the Wheel had turned, and she had tumbled down,
down, down—

The
Wheel would turn again. She had to believe that. She had to.

Exhaustion,
mental and physical overcame her while she was trying to convince herself of
that, and she slept.

Only
to be jolted awake by the impact of a delicately pointed toe on her own sore
ribs.

She
started out of sleep, and looked up, dumbly, to find that Alison, her
daughters, and the odious Warrick Locke were all gazing down at her with
expressions on their faces that made her heart turn to stone. And a scrap of
lace and a single rosebud dangled from Alison’s fingertips.

“Take
care of her,” Alison said to Locke, before Eleanor could say a word.

And
before she could move, he had swooped down on her like a hawk on a mouse, a rag
in one hand that he clamped over her nose and mouth. There was a sickly-sweet
smell—

—and then,
nothing.

August 12, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire

ALISON LOOKED DOWN AT
THE unconscious and much-battered form of her stepdaughter, sprawled on top of
the heap of ragged blankets that was her bed, and seethed with rage that she
carefully kept from her expression. There was no point in letting everyone know
how close she was to unleashing that rage. In fact, she was quite sure that it
was her control, and not her anger, that frightened Locke. “I am very
glad you were clever enough to see past her costume at the ball,
Lauralee,” she said, keeping her voice level. “And gladder still
that you kept her from seeing you. She very nearly undid everything we have
accomplished so far. Who could have guessed that idiot boy would have been
attracted to her?”

Carolyn
pouted. “What I want to know is, where did she get that dress?” Her
expression, as well as her voice, was raw with envy. That would have been
moderately interesting under other circumstances, as her mother would never
have guessed she had a passion for pink, lace, and rosebuds. It was an
exceedingly misplaced concern, given the situation.

“Light
the lamp, Carolyn,” was all Alison said. She was not entirely in charity
with her younger daughter at the moment. Carolyn continued to pout, but did as
she was ordered.

“And
how did she get in the door?” Lauralee added, her own voice hard with the
same anger her mother was feeling.

“More
to the point, how did she get
out
the door—this door?”
Alison retorted, gesturing at the exit from the kitchen. “There are
explanations for the rest—she could have found the dress in the attic,
for instance, and she could have told the butler that she was with us in order
to get into the ball. Didn’t you say Reggie had asked about her,
Carolyn?”

Carolyn
blinked, as if the question caught her by surprise. “Well,” she
admitted reluctantly, “yes, but—”

“So
she could easily have been on the guest list, and all she had to do was claim
she misplaced her invitation. But
how
did she manipulate my coercive
spells?” Alison glared down at the wretched girl. “That’s
what I want to know!”

“You
have been concentrating on Reggie,” Warrick Locke reminded her.
“And you’ve been quite careful about working magic anywhere around
Lady Virginia since her ladyship arrived. Between the two, your coercive spells
may have weakened. It’s just a very good thing for all of us that
Lauralee spotted her, and that the rest of us were at the ball too.”

“If
you hadn’t had Warrick along,
he
wouldn’t have been able
to shield Lady Virginia from sensing magic,” Lauralee reminded her
mother. “So you were able to redouble your coercions and force her back
here. She didn’t fight that, so possibly, as Mr.Locke says, it’s
only that your binding spells were weakening over time because you
haven’t been renewing them.”

“Or
possibly the girl is coming into her powers.” Alison gritted her teeth.
That was the one possibility that simply hadn’t occurred to her up until
this moment. And it was the one possibility that made her the angriest.
“If that’s the case, then there’s no time to waste.
We’ll have to take her out to the nearest mine, the one closest to the
Hoar Stones, and dump her there now instead of later. If she
is
becoming a Fire mage—her powers won’t do her any good in there. Not
underground, and not when my creatures are finished with her.”

Oh,
the miserable chit! She was forcing everything—and ruining what she
hadn’t forced!

“Alison,”
Locke said, warningly, pulling out his watch, and showing the face to her,
“It’s nearly five in the morning. We can’t take her now.
Someone will see us.”

For
one moment, Alison deeply regretted her rise in social status, because it would
have been very relieving of her frustrations to curse like a fishwife right
now. Locke was right, of course; none of the motors had anywhere to hide a
bundled-up body, and the sun would be up by the time they got everything packed
up and into the automobiles. It would have to wait until dark.

“How
do you want to keep her unconscious?” Locke continued, now looking
nervous. “I hate to advise against more chloroform, because it is
dangerous, and there’s an equal chance that I’d kill her or
she’d come out of it—and you don’t want her dead, that will
do you no good at all—”

“I
have something,” Alison interrupted him. “It’s a bit more
precise.”

She
went upstairs to her room, and came back down with the morphia kit in both hands.
It amused her slightly to see Locke’s eyes bulge a little when he
realized what it was. She readied the needle, pleased that she had learned to
do all of this a long time ago. One of the few benefits of caring for the
aged…

“You
surprise me,” Locke said, finally, as she pulled a measured dose of the
fluid into the chamber. “This is not something I would have expected you
to possess.” The look of shock still on his face made her raise an
eyebrow.

“Don’t
be an idiot, Warrick,” Lauralee snapped. “Mother’s not an
addict. She just believes in being prepared. She got that from our doctor in
London ages ago. She told him it was because Eleanor had fits.”

“And
I pay him well enough to be incurious,” Alison said, kneeling down at the
girl’s side, turning her arm over, and probing for a vein. “He
noted it in his records as being for Eleanor, and it cost me a pretty penny,
too. But you never know when you’re going to need to keep someone
quiet.” She injected the fluid, and stood up. “There. That should
keep her for quite some time. And it has the added benefit that, if she
is
coming into her powers, it will throw her right out of her body for a while,
which should thoroughly disorient her.”

She
waved at Locke, who was just standing there, gaping at her. “Take the little
wretch and bundle her out of sight somewhere.”

“Where?”
he asked, and she turned a furious face towards him.

“I
don’t care! You know this house well enough to find some place! I
don’t want anyone coming in here and stumbling over her, that’s
all!” She suppressed the urge to stamp her foot. Did she have to think of
everything?

“The
wash-house?” suggested Lauralee sweetly. “No one would look in
there, and it will be handy for taking her out to the autos when we leave
tonight.”

They
all looked to Alison, who nodded. Carolyn, she noted, was looking more and more
calf-like. Stupid
and
sulky. Well, it was clear which of her daughters
was the more useful.

Alison
watched, lips pressed tightly together, as Locke picked up the girl, heaved her
over his shoulder, and followed Lauralee out the kitchen door and into the dark
and shadowy yard. There was a creak as the wash-house door opened, a soft thud,
and the creak of the door again. Then a rattle as Lauralee shot home the bolt,
locking Eleanor in. Wise little Lauralee, who was also taking no chances.

Lauralee
led the way back in through the kitchen door, yawning, and in spite of the
tension, Alison found herself yawning as well. “Mother, I am
shattered—”

“We
all are,” Alison said, cutting her off, grimly. “This has been a
less than successful night, and we are going to have to act quickly and
resolutely to minimize the damage. We can’t do that without sleep.
She
will keep. Warrick, you can take one of the spare bedrooms; at this point, with
as much as we have at stake, I am willing to risk a little gossip.”

Lauralee
nodded, looking relieved. Carolyn walked up the first few stairs, and her
sister followed, more slowly, burdened as she was by her elaborate costume.

“I
did
come to the ball with you,” Locke pointed out meekly.
“And it would only be hospitable to offer a place for me for the night,
after such a late return.”

“Do
you think Reggie will come looking for her here?” Lauralee asked
suddenly, turning back to look down at them with an expression of worry.

What
with everything else that was going wrong—probably. “He
might,” Alison replied. “And we need to be prepared for
that.” She thought about it for a moment. “Our best bet may be to
try and convince him that the girl he met was not Eleanor,
but—Lauralee.”

“Lauralee!”
Carolyn exclaimed angrily, jealousy sharpening her tone. “Why
Lauralee?”

“She’s
the nearest in size, he didn’t set eyes on her once all evening, and the
difference in hair-color can be explained with a wig,” Alison replied, consigning
Carolyn’s hopes to the dustbin without a twinge. “Whereas you,
dear, he danced with twice, so he knows very well that you weren’t in the
fairy princess costume. He can’t possibly have
known
who Eleanor
is; when would he ever have met her? It might work, and if it does, we’ll
have saved the situation. You can explain running away somehow. I leave it up
to you to think of something.”

“I
will,” Lauralee promised, and she turned to go back up the stairs. Her
sister led the way, bristling and pouting at the same time.

“That
one’s going to be trouble,” Locke warned. “She’s going
to let jealousy of her sister take precedence over everything else.”

Alison
sniffed. “She’s the least of my worries. She’ll behave
herself now because this situation will fall to pieces if we don’t all
work together. And she’ll behave herself later—because she knows
what will happen if she doesn’t.”

“Oh?”
Locke replied, looking skeptical.

She
dropped the mask she habitually wore and let him see the true Alison Robinson,
just for a moment. He shrank back, as she reinforced the revelation with her
next words.

“I
only
need
one daughter,” she said, icily. “And I
periodically remind them of that.” She smiled as he nodded, trembling,
and all but scrambled up the stairs to a guest room.

August 12, 1917
Elsewhere

At one moment,
Eleanor had been surrounded by the last people on earth she wanted to see. She
had started to get up, but Warrick Locke had pounced on her with a rag in one
hand. He had covered her nose and mouth with it; she had been forced to breathe
through it, tasting a sickly-sweet, unbearably thick aroma, and the next thing
she knew she had been thrust into blackness. She seemed to fall forever, then
there was a kind of electric jolt—

Now,
she was
here
. The Tarot-world, with its flat, blue sky and its flat,
green lawns. But this was a part of it she had never seen before.

She
stood inside a square of grass that was surrounded by hedges whose tops were
well above her head. It all looked very measured and regular; too regular to be
real.

“Where
am I?” she said aloud, though she really only thought she was talking to
herself.

But
she wasn’t alone. She heard something behind her, and turned. “You
are in the center of a maze,” said the Hermit, pushing back his cowl and
setting his lantern down. He frowned, but at the hedges, not at her, his bushy
gray brows knitting together. “You are in great danger; this is merely a
reflection in this world of another reality that surrounds you.”

At
the moment, she didn’t care what the maze was for. “I know I
don’t belong here,” she said urgently. “And I know I’m
in danger—but I didn’t come here by myself, and I don’t know
how to get out! Is there any way you can help me?”

He
looked directly into her eyes, and she saw a personality there—something
she had not ever really seen with any of the other Tarot cards. “The
Perfect Fool asks the unasked questions—” he said aloud. Then he
changed.

He
became—Fire. Fire incarnate. A sexless creature of insubstantial flame,
gazing at her with penetrating blue eyes, eyes the color of a hot gas flame.
His voice remained the same, however.

“I
think we can dispense with this, child,” he said, and with a casual
gesture, the maze, the flat blue sky, the flat green earth, were all gone. In
their place—a world of fire, fire which not only did not burn her, but
which, when it touched her, felt like a cool caress. “You are not a
Master, not yet—I am not compelled to obey you, nor required by mutual
bargain.”

She
shook her head. “I know that,” she replied, swallowing. “And
I know I’ll be studying all my life to really understand my powers. I was
foolish to think I could Master all the cards in a few days, but—but I
think
I could have gotten enough to have broken free of Alison.”