Whisper the Dead (The Lovegrove Legacy) (22 page)

And a tail.

She was still trying to master her magic and could never quite fully cage the wolf. Sometimes she had ears, once an unfortunate case of whiskers, but usually a rather fluffy tail. Needless to say, she was restricted to the townhouse while in London.

“It’s not safe,” Tobias told her, tossing a blanket on a nearby chair over her shoulders.

“I’m at home.” She patted his arm as though he were an overprotective nanny. “What could happen to me here?”

“All the same,” he replied. “It’s late, even for you.” Posy kept odd hours, even before her troubles controlling her wolf.

“There was a meeting,” she said carefully.

“A meeting?”

“Mother called the London pack together,” she explained. “When she found out about Sophie Truwell.”

“Already?”

She shrugged. “Of course.”

“And you should have been there,” Ky interjected, coming out of the conservatory. He wore his usual linen shirt with the leather strap across his chest bristling with daggers. He looked nothing like the son of a three-hundred-year-old earldom and everything like a young lad spoiling for a fight.

“Don’t start,” Posy begged them both.

“The Wolfcatchers are already on the hunt,” Ky said, ignoring her plea. “You know as well as I do that shape-shifter
pelts fetch triple the price when there’s a warlock on the loose.” He tested the tip of his favorite dagger. “We’ll need the Carnyx to keep us safe.”

“That’s what the Order is for.”

Ky snorted. “It’s bad enough they know our secret; I’m certainly not trusting the packs to them.”

“And the Carnyx are so much better? A band of boys who fight for the sake of fighting. Ask Donovan about the human Wolfcatcher he killed last year.”

“That Catcher took his brother’s paw. The sawbones had to take the rest of his hand when he shifted back to human form. And if you’d let Gaelen join the Carnyx, she might have been able to save herself.”

There was a tense, brittle silence. Posy began to shift, the tension too much for her. Her teeth elongated and ears poked out of her hair.

Tobias and Ky were practically nose to nose. Ky was snarling, anger covering the hurt of a little brother. Tobias was icy in his control, but his fists were clenching despite himself.

“That’s enough,” their mother snapped from the doorway. Lady Elise Lawless might have been a silhouette clad in a blue silk gown, but she spoke with the command of the Alpha, and a mother besides. The brothers paused, separating.

“Lady Barlow’s son was nearly snatched by a Catcher this evening,” she said grimly. “He was last seen by Blackfriar’s Bridge.”

“I’ll notify the Order,” Tobias said immediately.

“Never mind them,” Ky said. “This is family business.”

“Yes, and I’m family,” Tobias pointed out coolly. His inner wolf yanked on its leash. He had to bite back a growl, felt it reverberating in his chest.

“And yet you keep choosing them over us.”

“It’s not like that.” Even if it sometimes felt like it.

“I’m fighting for our pack. For our family,” Ky said. “Who are you fighting for?”

Gretchen, Emma, and Penelope crept down the hallway in their nightdresses, the carpet swallowing the sounds of their footsteps. They didn’t light a candle until they were inside the last bedroom on the left with the door shut safely behind them.

Sophie’s bedroom.

It hadn’t yet been assigned to another student, but there was no telling how long that would last. The room was as small as Emma’s, with a gilded pier glass over a table meant for perfuming and hairdressing, and furniture painted green with yellow flowers. The requisite rowan berries and salt were set out in the corners and on the windowsill.

Penelope made a circuit of the room. She brushed her fingertips over the tabletop and was immediately assaulted by images that spun by like a lantern show. They made her dizzy with their sheer numbers and speed: a maid with a burn from the fire grate, a footman carrying a trunk and a sizeable grudge against the housekeeper, a student who could talk to birds but couldn’t stop them from flying into the windows, another maid, three more students muttering curses over their schoolbooks. She
staggered back a step, holding on to the bedpost for balance. “I can’t sort through all of the magical residue left behind. There’s too much.”

“Perhaps all her belongings were taken by the Order,” Emma said, peering into the armoire. It was empty of dresses, slippers, and bonnets. “For examination.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Daphne snapped from the doorway. She looked out of breath and furious.

Splendid.

“None of your business,” Gretchen returned, utterly incapable of ignoring a challenge of any kind. “And must you constantly lurk about? Shouldn’t you be trodding on some poor sod’s toes?”

“Unlike you, some of us are perfectly capable dancers,” Daphne retorted out of habit. Her blue eyes narrowed. “You’re in Sophie’s bedroom,” she added. “And I demand to know why. Before I call the night watchman.”

“There’s no crime in being in a bedroom,” Emma pointed out gently. “You look as if you ran all the way here.”

“I set spells to notify me if anyone tried to come in here,” she replied, eyeing the cousins carefully.

“Whyever for?” Penelope asked.

Daphne blinked. “What do you mean, why? Sophie was my friend.”

“And she betrayed you,” Gretchen said bluntly.

“Gretchen.” Emma nudged her. “Easy.”

Gretchen didn’t look away from Daphne’s pale face. “You want to know why she did what she did. Why she would choose
the Greymalkin Sisters over you,” Gretchen continued, not unkindly. She wouldn’t have been able to stomach kindness and pity were she in Daphne’s shoes. And Daphne had once elected to help Emma when Emma was wrongly accused of Lilybeth’s murder, in order to find the real murderer. “We want to know why as well,” she added.

“How?” Daphne demanded. “I know she’s gone. My father told me, right before he wrapped me in so many protective spells I practically have to move sideways through the doorway.”

“She has no reason to come after you,” Emma said. “She once told me you were the reason the other girls stopped teasing her when she first arrived at the school.”

Daphne nodded bleakly. “She had me fooled.”

“She had everyone fooled.”

“And for someone who claimed to be an orphan and so lonely she summoned three warlock spirits, she clearly knew someone other than you and Lilybeth very well indeed.” Gretchen raised her eyebrows when they only frowned at her, confused. “Well, someone helped her escape before she reached Percival House. The question is who and why?” She glanced at Daphne. “Aren’t you going to tell me that is what the Order is for and we should leave it to them?”

Daphne lifted her chin. “Certainly not. They’ve had every seer and clairvoyant trying to locate Sophie but to no avail. And I have a brother who is going to inherit my father’s title and estates, as well as all of the magical knowledge acquired by a First Legate, simply for being born a boy. Even though he is bacon-brained and wouldn’t know an amulet from a teacake.” She sniffed. “No, I think this is best left to those of us who knew Sophie, or
at least knew the world in which she lived. This is still a case best left to debutantes.”

“Well, blast,” Gretchen muttered. “We agree on something.”

“I’m going to read something that belonged to Sophie,” Penelope explained, unclenching her fingers from the bedpost. “If there’s anything left, that is. I had no luck with the inkwell.”

Daphne looked around with a knowing eye, having clearly spent time with Sophie in the room. “She liked that chair by the fire for her morning pot of chocolate.”

Penelope shook her head. “That chair’s been here long before King George went mad. I’d never be able to sort through that many magical impressions.”

“There,” Daphne said, pointing to a small red charm bag hanging over the window. It was embroidered with a white witch knot and wound around with a black ribbon. “She’d have added ingredients to that charm bag. They’re in all of the bedrooms and last year we were set the task of augmenting the spell.”

“Don’t touch it,” Penelope said quickly when Daphne reached for it. “It will overpower anything left behind as I can read the most recent history the easiest.”

Daphne let her hand drop to her side. Penelope plucked the tiny pouch off the nail. The ribbon slipped free, brushing against the back of her knuckles. She was caught in a kaleidoscope, colors and sounds all bleeding together until they sharpened suddenly and she was no longer sitting on the edge of a gilded chair in the front parlor of the academy. For a moment the colors were too bright, pulsing around the edges and making her feel odd inside. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

She was in a thatched house with diamond-paned windows on
the edge of a forest. She was sitting on a cot tucked by the fireplace, holding the hand of a young girl. The girl was pale and clammy, her cheeks burning red
.

“Beth,” she wept. “Don’t die. Please don’t die.” She rubbed her witch knot until it bled. And still there wasn’t enough magic
.

There was no stopping it
.

Penelope’s knees hit the hard floor as she crumpled.

“Did you see her?” Emma asked, helping her to sit up.

“Yes, when she was younger. Before she came here.” She shook her head, stopped when it made the room spin. “In a cottage in the woods. Did she have a sister?”

“She never mentioned it,” Daphne replied. “Though she did have an old doll she refused to part with. She said it belonged to someone she knew once.”

Gretchen looked suddenly and darkly gleeful. “Do you know how to make a poppet, Daphne?”

“What does that—oh. Yes,” Daphne said slowly, as the idea germinated. “In fact I do. But the Order burned all of her belongings, in case they were laced with dark magic. It never occurred to them that she might get away.” She opened the drawers of the desk, rifling through abandoned ribbons, pencils, and writing quills left by countless students.

“What are you two planning?” Emma asked.

“A poppet like the one that was used against me,” Gretchen replied grimly. “By Sophie, I imagine. Who else would attack me?”

Daphne snorted. “Anyone who’d met you, and half the girls at this school since Tobias carried you into the parlor in his very manly arms.”

“Thank you, Daphne,” Gretchen said. “That’s very helpful.”

She shrugged. “Still, you’re probably right. Sophie would be vexed that you undid a few of her spells this week alone.”

“Did you say I was right? Can someone write that down so she can sign it?”

“Never mind that,” Penelope interrupted. “Can’t we use the charm bag? Since we know she handled it?”

“No, it has to be something personal, not something that she merely touched. It has to have been a part of her.” Daphne moved to the vanity table, pausing over a silver tray holding a silver-backed hairbrush made to look like a braid of foxglove flowers and a crystal bottle of rosewater. “Can you find out which ones belonged to Sophie?”

Penelope felt limp as old lettuce but she straightened her shoulders with determination. “Yes.” She went to the bed and stretched out. “So I don’t fall on my head,” she explained before she closed her eyes tight, the same way she always did before having to swallow unpleasant medicine or jellied sweetmeats at a formal supper party. Luminescent spiders lowered from her hair in glowing webs. She pulled at one of the hairs clinging to the bristles of the brush. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” she said finally.

She was sitting in front of the mirror, brushing her hair in even, constant strokes, staring at her reflection. A yawning loneliness nibbled at her, consuming more and more of her until she was hollow as a pipe reed. The wind could go through her and sing a song. “Soon,” she whispered desperately. “Soon.”

Penelope opened her eyes. The bed’s embroidered canopy was a pale arch above her as she waited for the dizziness to pass.
At least the room wasn’t spinning as quickly as it had before. She sat up on her elbows. “This one,” she said finally, her voice hoarse with exertion.

Daphne plucked it from her hand. “Good,” she said grimly. “Let’s get started. We need dried lily stalks.”

Gretchen flinched, pressing a hand to her temple. “Reeds would be better. I’ll fetch some from the apothecary closet.”

By the time she returned, clutching dead flowers, Emma had taken down one of the curtains. Daphne found scissors in the desk and was cutting out enough of the heavy cream-colored brocade material for two dolls. “There’s only enough here for two poppets,” she said. “One for us and one for the Order.” When Gretchen opened her mouth to protest, she continued haughtily. “My father’s the First Legate.”

“Not this again,” Gretchen muttered, but she didn’t pursue it.

“I’ll sew them,” Penelope offered. “It will be faster. Hand me my reticule.” She pulled out a small kit with needle and thread and began to stitch the edges of the poppets together. She left the head open enough for Daphne to stuff it, adding Sophie’s hair to each. She used ink to mark the left hand with a witch knot, and added two eyes.

They were simple dolls, smelling like flowers.

“Sophie has the ability to make us suffer all our past injuries, a connection to the Greymalkin Sisters, and she has four murdered girls to her credit. And we have a doll,” Gretchen said drily. “I feel safer already.”

• • •

Penelope decided to stop for ices at Gunter’s in Berkeley Square. The sun was finally out and it felt like a proper summer afternoon. Mayfair even smelled like flowers instead of the hot Thames and horse droppings. They had a poppet to protect them against Sophie, and she’d just bought three novels and Lord Byron’s new collection of poetry. It was as good a reason as any to celebrate.

And since it was ridiculous to ignore Ian, who was standing outside the shop, trying to look nonchalant, she bought him one too. They stood under the awning and discussed her new books, and he apologized three more times for his part in bringing her in for questioning.

“Lady Penelope.”

Penelope recognized Lucius Beauregard’s voice instantly. She widened her eyes at Ian, who, not being Gretchen or Emma, just looked confused. She stifled a sigh. Until he wiped the corner of his mouth pointedly but subtly. She licked the corner of her lips, tasting sticky sugar. Having her own Keeper was proving to be quite useful. Never mind a warlock on the loose, he’d just saved her from the embarrassment of greeting Lucius with food on her face.