Something in that library would help me reach up and take it. Or so I thought. And hope remained for the first hour of searching, but waned as I slumped into the second. I would soon be missed. Nuncheon was approaching, and if I did not appear in the kitchens to help serve, then Mrs. Haylam would come looking. Nothing about her mood that morning made me want to cross her, and so I glanced through book after book. Each promising book contained nothing but translations without a single passage of Gaelic for comparison. Some, those with titles all in Gaelic that made the fires of hope burn a little brighter each time I glimpsed them, were unintelligible from cover to cover. I was accomplishing nothing other than creating a mess for myself that I would soon need to tidy.
At last, I spied a book with a green cover on the bookshelves nearest to the door. The spine was decorated with gold leaves, and read Dagda, The Warrior and just next to that, Dagda, An Laoch. This could contain the side-by-side comparison I might use as a base of knowledge. Breathlessly, I scurried back to my hiding place, crawling into the windowsill and tucking up my knees. Cracking the cover, I flipped through the first few pages, feeling a hot, prickling sensation climb from my chest to my neck and higher. Useless. The book was useless. Another full English translation with little to help me.
That book, perhaps the thirtieth I had found and discarded, made something come loose inside me. Furious, I let out a cry of frustration and hurled the book across the room. It landed with a dull thud in the corner. Nobody came running. I was alone and foolish, red and sweating with anger. I picked up the letter and tore open the seal, cursing at it as I took it in both hands and began to tear, enraged, ripping it cleanly down the middle.
And then I stopped.
Fury. Rage. It must have pulled at the power inside of me, for in front of my eyes the words began to change, as legible and clear as if I spoke the language fluently.
I had changed it. I could change a spoon into a knife and into a key, but with enough need and desperation, shift language to language. It was astounding. Gasping, I watched the words shimmer as they waited to be read, my so-called father’s looping hand preserved in all its intricate beauty.
My Dear Louisa, it began. At long, long last I have found you.
My entire body shook as I read the letter, carefully holding the two halves together. I read it once, twice, and then a third time, leaning back against the windowsill for support. He had lived not far from where I was born, and described my mother, our town, even our house, with perfect detail. There was no mention of love for my mother, only passion, and then embarrassment when he realized their liaison would produce a child. Me.
I fled north, and in my confusion I failed you both. I always knew I would return to look for you, child, but I did not know whether I would have the courage to offer the apology you so dearly deserve.
He spoke of riches made from hunting rare flowers and ambergris for perfumes. Enfleurage. If what he said was true, my father—my real father—was the kind of person who knew what enfleurage was. Wealthy. Posh.
That was one sharp barb to bear; the second came in the next paragraph.
Strange powers have always run in my family, and through my blood you are gifted or cursed, however you choose to interpret it. Perhaps, as I did, you always knew that you were different. Or maybe you have yet to know the full depths of what you are. This strangeness in your blood can be harnessed to take you far, or you can crumble under the burden of society’s expectations. Whatever you choose, I should be there to shoulder the burden with you, as I am the architect of your fantastic reality.
Another surge of anger burned through me. While this coward was off picking flowers and making a fortune, we were scrabbling in the dirt to eke out a living, crowded into no more than a shack while my father—my false father—drank himself to death. None of this needed to have happened. I did not need to end up with my cruel grandparents or the crueler Pitney School. I need not have endured beatings and neglect. I need not have run away and drifted to Coldthistle House.
Bitter, furious tears spilled down my cheeks. I set the letter aside and wept, wishing for even the smallest comfort of friendship or understanding. I missed Lee. I missed Mary. One or both of them, once upon a time, might have known what to say to me in that dark despair. The sadness soon twisted into spitefulness. Perhaps I should invite this monster to the house of monsters and rob him of everything he had. Maybe it was better to have a worthless drunk for a father than whatever this person fancied himself.
By his absence he had made me small and poor and blighted with dark magic.
I wiped at the tears on my face and folded up the torn letter, placing it back in my apron. It was no use wallowing there in the windowsill, not when tantalizing thoughts of revenge danced in my brain. As much as I was loath to admit it, he was right—this shirker, this thief, this Croydon Frost—I could wither or rise, and I would not let his letter or his existence make me crumble.
The mess of books I had made would have to wait for later. I stormed out of the library and into the hall, startling one of the shadowy Residents, one that had apparently been attempting to eavesdrop on me. It reared back and vanished in a puff of black smoke. I cared not, for there was nobody it could tattle to who wouldn’t soon have the truth of it from my mouth. Farther down the corridor I found Poppy sweeping the landing, her head bent over her work as she hummed an idle tune.
“Oh! There you are, Louisa, Mrs. Haylam was—”
“Not now,” I said, brusque, quickly turning at the landing and bolting down the stairs. “She can find me later!”
“But she will be cross with you! Louisa!”
“I don’t care.”
I felt alive with anger, speeding along on a current of fire. When I reached the foyer, I could hear Mrs. Haylam in the kitchens preparing the afternoon meal, but I quickly dodged out of her sight and toward the green door leading to Mr. Morningside’s office. As usual, the air beyond the door was close and unsettling, but I banished any thoughts of hesitation and flew down and down, then through the antechamber littered with portraits.
Money. One could do so much with money. I could recover the life that had been stolen from me, yes, but I could do more. Chijioke and Poppy were employed through contracts at the house, and they certainly relied on the room and board provided. But what if I could provide? They had become my friends, and with a true fortune I could change all of our lives. I could buy a house—no, a mansion—and let Chijioke, Poppy, Lee, and that massive dog live however they chose to, without the burden of killing and concealing.
That thought was even more inspiring, pushing me faster. My only misgivings came when I at last reached the door to his office and felt an unmistakable tension waiting on the other side. He cursed, loudly, and slammed a fist on his desk so hard the entire house around me seemed to rattle with his rage.
Taking in a deep breath, I tapped on the door. It was a soft and sheepish sound, which was why I jumped when Mr. Morningside’s voice thundered through, unnaturally strong.
“What?”
And again I made a tiny sound, this time with my voice. “It’s . . . It’s Louisa. I wanted to speak with you about my father.”
There came a sigh and then a pause. He muttered something and groaned, “Go away, Louisa.”
“No. No, I won’t go away. I want to speak with you right now—”
The door blasted open, revealing Mr. Morningside at his desk, both fists digging into the wood as he snarled at me.
“This is a very bad time,” he warned.
Carefully, I took a few shuffling steps inside and cleared my throat, trying not to cower in the face of his displeasure. His office had become even more of a mess, and his normally coiffed, perfect hair had come undone, tousled to the side. Opened books, quills, and parchment were scattered before him, though one strange journal sat directly in front of him, between his fists. It looked handwritten, but it was just filled with drawings and scribbles.
“I want to meet this
man,” I said, drawing the two halves of the letter from my apron. “I’ve . . . Well, I’ve read what he has to say and I’m not satisfied. I believe he owes me a debt, a large one, and I intend to collect. I want his money, you see. I have plans for it.”
A wicked, slow smile spread across the Devil’s face, but he did not change his posture. “Translated it, did you? Who helped?”
I balked. “Nobody helped me, I did it on my own.”
“Indeed. And with what materials? There are no Gaelic dictionaries in the library, to my knowledge. . . .”
“It doesn’t matter how I did it,” I shot back, irritated. “I want to meet him. Can you arrange it?”
At last he relaxed a bit, sitting back in his chair and fixing his hair with a snort. His cravat was askew and he addressed that, too. “I’m afraid, little bird, that it does matter. You tell me how you managed to translate the letter and I will arrange this revenge for you.”
“It isn’t revenge,” I spluttered, looking at my feet.
“It obviously is, Louisa, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Just as you stated, he owes you a debt, just as you owe me an explanation.” Mr. Morningside lifted both dark brows and nodded toward the letter. “How.”
He probably could have just as easily guessed how I managed it, but I obliged, slapping the torn letter onto the desk amid his terrible mess. “With my powers. I’m a Changeling, so . . . so I changed it.”
His golden eyes narrowed dangerously. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Leaning back farther, he rubbed his chin and studied first the letter and then me. Finally, his eyes slid to the journal opened just in front of him. “That’s remarkably advanced for someone so newly awakened. You’re absolutely certain nobody helped?”
I nodded, growing impatient.
He slapped the journal on his desk and chuckled, looking boyish, even excited. “How badly do you want to meet this man? How badly do you want to enact these plans?”
“Badly,” I replied, feeling again that surge of anger and the determination that came with it. Croydon Frost owed me a different life and I would not soon forget it. “Very, very badly.”
Mr. Morningside tented his fingers and peered at me over the top of them, giving me a cat’s languid smile. “Very, very badly, is it? Badly enough to make a deal with the Devil himself?”
Chapter Ten
Remember, my girl, my drunk of a father used to tell me. Every man has his limits. From the smallest to the tallest, they all have a weakness. You have to know it, girl, but you have to know yours, too. See the wall before you crash into it.
Surely this was my wall, standing before the Devil while he offered to strike a bargain with me. I looked at the birds behind him, and they all stared back at me, the little liquid beads of eyes trained on me. They were silent to a one. It felt like a bad omen, as if even these animals couldn’t believe that I was seriously considering saying yes.
But I was. I did not know if I was in control or out of it, but at least it was a feeling besides regret and loneliness. I had a purpose now, one I saw clearly: I would meet this Croydon Frost and punish him for what he did to me and my mother, punish him for the punishment of the father I had actually suffered, and most of all, punish him for cursing me with this Changeling’s body.
And if I could rob him of some of his riches and use them to escape all the strangeness I had come to know, then so much the better. Better still, I could help my friends out of employment that forced them to murder.
Mr. Morningside’s eyes glowed, as bright and enticing as embers on a cold night. Still, I was not reckless enough to lose all sense of caution or propriety. I tucked my hands behind my back and rocked on my heels, choosing my next words very carefully.
“May I know the terms before I agree to them?” I asked.
“You may,” he said at once. “I’m only making a modest request.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “All right, then; what is it that you want?”
He sat back down and reached for a brandy decanter hidden under a mountain of creased papers. Pouring himself a drink, he sipped it slowly and tipped his head back, regarding me down the length of his thin nose.
“I’ve been struggling to make sense of a rather important journal,” he said. At once, my attention fell on the scribbly pages in front of him. “Yes, that. I won it for a dear price at auction. Cadwallader’s of London. Funny old place; they only deal in rare goods from our side of things.”
“The Unworld,” I murmured.
“And the Upworld, and anything but the mundane,” he explained, taking another drink. “Had a lovely trio of shrunken heads that day, but my real interest was in this journal. Cadwallader knew it, too; said an odd fellow gave it to him for a song, thought it was an old bit of junk.”
Mr. Morningside put down his cup of brandy and flipped the leather cover on his desk, closing up the journal. He then nudged it toward me. I came up flush to the desk and leaned down slightly to get a better look. It was yellowed with age and some of the pages had suffered badly from water. A strip of leather dangled from the edge, a means to wrap up the journal and tie it shut. There was nothing at all written on the cover.
“Honestly, it does look like an old bit of junk. It looks perfectly ordinary to me,” I said.
“There’s nothing ordinary about it,” Mr. Morningside replied with a chuckle. He opened the cover and turned it, showing me the scribbles more directly. They were rows and rows of minuscule pictures. I picked out a bird and what looked like a wibbly line, possibly a wave. There were larger drawings, too. A long blue snake filled the bottom half of the page. “It belonged to a young man I’m very interested in. There are languages similar to what he used, but this journal is written completely in a shorthand of his own devising. I’ve been unable to translate anything but a few stray words here and there.”
I stood back and smiled, finding that Croydon Frost’s letter and the journal were now right next to one another. A translation. It hardly seemed like the sinister sort of demand one would expect from the Devil.
“And you think that I can read this journal because I translated my father’s letter?”
“Precisely,” Mr. Morningside replied, cheerful. “If I prayed, you would be the answer.”
“What’s so important about this journal?” I asked. If I was going to learn the terms of this bargain, I wanted to know everything.
“That’s not your concern,” he assured me. “It’s a big job and it may take up most of your time. I’ll make sure Mrs. Haylam knows that you will be less available for your usual duties. I’ll arrange a quiet space for you to work, and for now I’d like to keep this our little secret.”
My ears perked at that. A secret? If Mr. Morningside didn’t want anyone to know about the journal, then perhaps my being in possession of it would put me at an advantage. It might give me leverage over him. Or it might put me in danger. Both possibilities seemed equally likely. I glanced at the journal again, fighting my natural tendency toward curiosity.
“Is this going to get me in trouble?” I asked.
“It’s my journal, not yours, Louisa. If anyone should ask questions about it, you can come to me and I’ll handle everything.” He stood and fixed his cravat again, putting his fingertips lightly on the desk. “Give me proof that you’ve translated in full, say, the first entry, and I will arrange for your father to come. Whatever you choose to do with him is fine with me. You say when he comes and when he goes, and that will be that.”
It all seemed so simple. Unnervingly simple.
“Sometimes . . .” I sighed and pinched my lips together. “Sometimes I cannot make my powers do anything unless I’m upset.”
He was already reaching for one of the scattered pieces of parchment on his desk and a quill. Dunking the nib in ink, he wrote in huge, looping letters: CONTRACT.
“Is that so?” he asked, uninterested. For just an instant, he glanced up from his work, and if
I didn’t know better, I would think he looked truly happy. Relieved. “Well then, I suggest you find a solution to that problem. You want to be a rich girl, don’t you, Louisa? You want to have your revenge. . . .”
“That’s not the only thing I want.”
He paused, eyes glistening with renewed interest. “Oh?”
“My plans, remember? I want you to let Chijioke and Poppy out of their contracts. And Mary, too, if she ever returns. I know they have some kind of arrangement with you and Mrs. Haylam. I’d like Lee to come with us, too. There must be some way to free him from the house.”
Mr. Morningside tilted his head to the side, then squeezed his eyes shut. “Let me think . . . Ah yes, Chijioke and Poppy signed three-hundred-year resolutions with us. They are bound to serve the black book so long as it remains here at the house. Three hundred years have not passed, Louisa. You are asking me to let go of nearly my entire staff.”
“So? Replace them. You can find some other Dark Fae to do your bidding, can’t you?”
He scoffed at that. “Actually, your kind are not so easily replaceable. But I see your conundrum. A mere letter to your father is not much of a prize, I suppose. And I do admire your tenacity. Haggling with the Devil. You don’t see that one every day.”
Grinning, he put quill to paper. “Mrs. Haylam is fanatical about order, so this will deeply unsettle her. Do you know how this house works, Louisa? How we work? This is a little atmosphere in balance. My workers and I reap the souls of the evil; the shepherd sees to the souls of the good, or occasionally the unconventionally evil. These contracts keep the whole apparatus running smoothly. . . . You are asking me to tip a carefully balanced scale.”
I swallowed, sensing he was going to refuse me.
“But on the whole, it does feel like a fair bargain to me. After all, without this translation, I will be facing greater scrutiny from my peers, and that is not something I desire at all.” He glanced around at the office, his eyes coming to rest quite noticeably on the nearest perched bird. “No, scrutiny of the house will not do at all.”
Court of Shadows Page 6
