by Webb, Holly
Lily! I think it’s happening! It was a high, frightened scream inside her head, and Lily jumped up frantically. She stood, turning her head this way and that. It wasn’t like hearing someone cry out – she couldn’t tell the direction in the same way. She had to hold Georgie inside her, and run to that terrified voice. She grabbed Peter’s hand, patting his face to make him look at her. ‘I think she’s about to sleepwalk again! The spells have got her!’
Then she darted away, hauling him after her, towards the theatre wardrobe. She should have guessed at it first, she realised. It was always where Georgie went when she was frightened, or upset. She loved the gossipy room, full of dancers and seamstresses, with the kettle on the little oil stove in the corner. The only disasters there were people complaining that their costumes had torn, or that they’d lost a dancing slipper.
Georgie was in the doorway, with Maria, the wardrobe mistress, standing anxiously beside her.
‘She went strange,’ Maria hissed to Lily. ‘Her eyes – like a curtain came down over them. And she was talking, then she just stopped all of a sudden.’
‘It’s the spells,’ Lily murmured, staring at her sister. ‘She – she isn’t herself.’
‘My little brother used to walk in his sleep,’ one of the dancers suggested, peering at Georgie round the door. ‘My mother always used to tempt him with a bit of bread and bacon. Lure him back to bed, you see.’
‘But she wasn’t in bed,’ Maria snapped. ‘She just lapsed into it. Should we wake her, Lily?’
Lily shook her head. ‘No! No, we want her to stay like this,’ she explained, feeling the two women stare at her disapprovingly. ‘If we work out why the spells are making her do this, we might be able to stop them, you see,’ she added. It was almost true. She trusted Maria, but the fewer people who knew the real purpose of the spells inside Georgie, the better. Maria had a brooch pinned to her blouse, a little enamel crown – they were being sold everywhere, to celebrate the jubilee. However unpopular the Queen’s Men were, there was still a deep-seated love for Queen Sophia. Announcing that Georgie had been shaped almost from birth to murder her was not a good idea.
Georgie had been hesitating in the doorway, her head turning slightly from side to side as though she were listening. Now she stretched out one hand, so that her fingertips brushed the wall of the corridor, and set off walking, her pace slow but steady.
‘Will you unlock the doors for her?’ Henrietta asked, scurrying along beside Lily.
Lily nodded. ‘If I have to, but I wouldn’t be surprised if – look! I thought so...’
Georgie dipped her hand into the hanging pocket tied to the belt of her dress, and brought out a key. Her fingers clenched convulsively round it, and then she turned sharply into a different passage – one that led to the same side door that Lily and Henrietta had found her by the day before.
Where did she get the key! Peter thrust his notebook over Lily’s shoulder, and she turned back to look at him. ‘I don’t know! She must have stolen it from one of the doorkeepers.’ Lily shivered. She hadn’t seen Georgie under the control of the spells since yesterday morning, and she thought she’d been watching her so closely. But somehow her sister must have slipped away. The spells were sneaky, she ought to know that by now.
Georgie yanked at the bolts. She seemed stronger than usual, pulling at them fiercely and then rattling the key in the lock. The spells weren’t frightened of being heard, Lily thought unhappily. They would be ruthless, if anyone tried to stop them. And they would use strength that Georgie didn’t have, and destroy her doing it.
Georgie swung the door open, and set out determinedly down the side street, making for the main road, where the theatre had its grand frontage. Once there, she picked her way unerringly across the street, avoiding carriages and passers-by with an eerie ease. The spells seemed to be seeing for her.
She plunged through the streets, heading away from the shops and theatres towards the parks and smart houses closer to the palace. Lily and Peter followed a few steps behind, with Henrietta trotting beside them, alternately growling and panting.
Georgie kept walking, never stopping to ask the way or look at the street names. She just walked on and on, until she came to a pretty crescent of tall white houses, their doors glossily painted and the front steps all freshly whitened. The crescent looked out over one of the parks, where a fountain glittered in the sunlight, and the whole street looked too smart and perfect to be housing a murderous gang of magicians.
Georgie padded quietly up to the steps of one of the houses and stopped, her head turning in that same odd way again, as though she were waiting for instructions on what to do next. Lily and Peter realised that the three of them were alone in the street – not the sort of street where one could loiter inconspicuously, at all.
Could we watch from the park? Lily wondered. If they hovered at the bottom of the steps for much longer, a smartly dressed footman would probably be sent out to hurry them away. She was sure she could feel eyes on her already. Perhaps a spell, to hide them? she thought, dithering.
Peter tugged at her arm imperatively, and Lily swung round to see the front door starting to open. She backed away, expecting the footman, or even the butler.
Instead, Jonathan Dysart stood at the top of the steps, staring down at Lily and Georgie. Lily caught her sister’s arm, ready to run. But Georgie simply gazed up at the open door, and began to climb the stairs.
‘Georgie, no,’ Lily hissed.
‘Oh, it’s quite all right. You are in the right place. I could feel you coming. The Powers girls, isn’t it?’ His voice was soft and velvety, and it made Lily shiver. Now the ants crawling inside her seemed to have their feet stuck in honey. It reminded her of Mama’s charm magic. Jonathan Dysart reached out to wrap an arm round Georgie, who stared blankly out across the park, and he beckoned Lily with his other hand. ‘I was so very sorry to have to send you girls to Fell Hall,’ he murmured. ‘Those bad daughters of mine. They have not been used to working with other magician children. Though now, of course, all that has changed. Cora and Penelope will be most glad to see you safely returned.’
Lily was willing to bet that they would be no such thing, but she only smiled, hoping that Mr Dysart had not spoken to their mother in the last few months. That he had no idea they were not part of his foul conspiracy.
‘So after the, er, strange goings-on at Fell Hall, you girls have been making your way back to London?’ Mr Dysart enquired delicately, and Lily nodded. She didn’t want him knowing anything about the theatre.
‘And we brought Peter with us from Fell Hall too,’ she explained, wanting to distract Mr Dysart from thinking about what exactly had gone on at the reform school for magician children, and how she and Georgie had been mixed up in it.
‘Indeed, indeed...’ Mr Dysart ignored Peter entirely and looked thoughtfully from Georgie, so white and silent, to Lily, who was clearly not under the influence of any spells whatever.
Lily smiled at him, fear stretching her grin horribly wide. ‘Georgie has most of the magic in our family,’ she explained. ‘Mama never trained me. But Georgie was so certain that she had to be here, and I didn’t want her to come alone. May we watch – whatever it is you’re doing?’
‘Oh, we’re just rehearsing.’ Mr Dysart twirled his dark moustache, and smiled behind it. ‘A little scene to celebrate the miraculous reign of our dear Queen Sophia. She has been so kind as to promise to watch our efforts on her special day.’ He patted Lily’s cheek. ‘Of course you may watch, little one. And we will find a special part for your dear older sister to play. A nereid, perhaps, with seashells.’
Lily nodded vaguely. She had very little idea what he was talking about. What mattered was that he was turning back towards the open door, and taking Georgie with him. Lily hurried after them. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was a good idea or not, but she wasn’t
letting her sister go in there on her own, and Peter wasn’t leaving either of them.
Jonathan Dysart led them into the house, past a strangely blank-faced housemaid, who curtseyed without really looking at them. She looked as bespelled as Georgie, Lily thought. She supposed that the staff had to be, here in London. At Merrythought, the servants hadn’t had much chance to betray the family, shut away on the island as they were. And they had been too terrified of Mama to write home with secrets. But if they left the Powers family’s service and went back to the mainland, she addled their memories before they went.
Lily was too anxious to take much in as they followed Mr Dysart up the stairs, but the house had a very different feel to Merrythought. It was a light, bright place, with pale paint on the banisters, and patterned wallpaper covered in leaves and flowers and birds. One of them, a tiny yellow thing with a black beak, leaned forward to peer at Lily and Georgie as they passed by, putting its head on one side to watch them with a bright little eye. It twittered at the girls curiously, and then all the others set up an excited chorus behind them. There was a flowery scent in the air, too, and Lily decided that this house belonged to a woman, a young woman. She could feel her magic, hanging glittering in the air.
She felt envious for a moment, imagining how it would be to have a house full of pretty magical tricks. But then she remembered that poor maidservant, and her blank eyes. The young woman who owned this house, and decorated it so prettily, was part of the plot. She meant to murder who knew how many children.
Lily could hear a hum of conversation as they rounded the top of the stairs, talking and laughter and excitement, which wrapped around her as Jonathan Dysart led them into the room. It ran across the whole front of the house, with tall windows looking out onto the park on one side and mirrors that matched the windows on the other, so that the light reflected and sparkled and bounced around, and the long room seemed even fuller than it really was.
The chatter died slowly away as Lily and Georgie stood in the doorway, and Lily shifted uncomfortably as everyone stared. She had been brought up with so few people at Merrythought that she still found it strange to have people staring at her. It had been different on stage, somehow, where she wasn’t really herself. This was very much more frightening. It was a little like their first entry to the classroom at Fell Hall, but there everyone had been drugged by spells, and miserable, and they’d hardly bothered to notice two new girls.
The chattering began again, in quiet whispers, as the children wondered who they were. Lily set her shoulders straight, and stared back. How could she have thought these were like the children at Fell Hall? They were all exquisitely dressed, for a start, not swathed in ugly grey uniforms that never fitted, and they were all, quite clearly, magical. It shone and sparkled out of them, even those like Georgie who had the pale, faint look of the enchanted. At Fell Hall half the children had been there by mistake, and had never used magic in their lives. They’d simply had the misfortune to have looked a little different, or perhaps they’d cried too much as babies, or had mismatched eyes, or a hundred other silly reasons. Even the real magician children had been forced to bury their talent under layers of thick, sickly spells that told them they were evil.
‘This is Georgiana Powers, and her little sister,’ Mr Dysart explained. ‘Georgiana will be joining our performance. Why don’t you watch from over there, little one?’ He waved Lily over to the chairs between the windows, and Peter took up a position by the door, as though he was a footman who had been sent to accompany the girls across the city. A rather oddly dressed footman, to be sure, but he managed the superior expression very well. Lily tried to assume something similar, but she was too worried. What were they doing, all these magicians? For there were adults, too, sitting watching around the room as she was meant to be. They were just as interested in her and Georgie as the children were.
Henrietta scratched at Lily’s knee, and Lily reached down to pick her up. The black pug dog curled up into Lily’s lap, and Lily leaned down to stroke her, and whisper, ‘Should we let them see you can talk? I told him that I didn’t have much magic.’
‘Tell them I’m Georgie’s then,’ Henrietta muttered. ‘What are this lot doing? Is it some sort of play?’
The children in the centre of the room were arranged around a chair, draped in golden fabric, on which sat a particularly bored-looking girl, her hair dressed high on her head, with a sort of tiara balanced in it. Six other girls were kneeling around her, holding up their arms in graceful curves – or they would have been, if they hadn’t obviously been rehearsing this for a while, and lost interest. Most of them were just whispering about Georgie now. The rest of the children were placed in small groups around them, poised ready to start a dance, it looked like.
‘Music, please!’ a tall girl in a floaty white dress called, and everyone wriggled, and stood straighter, and tried to look a little more as though they were paying attention. Lily hadn’t noticed before that there was a piano at one end of the room, and two boys with violins, and a girl playing a flute. They were all magicians too, she realised, with a thrill of surprise. She had never heard enchanted music before.
‘You stand here, and join in with the others,’ the girl in the white dress murmured, leading Georgie to a little huddle of girls near the front.
Lily decided she must be the owner of the house – her white dress with its green sash was all of a piece with the pretty wallpaper, and the vases of flowers scattered artlessly around the room. If Georgie had been properly there, she would have been scandalised that the girl didn’t seem to be wearing any kind of corset, and not many petticoats either.
‘So ridiculous, putting you in now, no one cares about us doing this properly,’ the girl muttered. ‘Still, it won’t matter, I suppose. But just for the look of the thing...’
Cora and Penelope were in this group too, and they glared at Georgie, but she was beyond recognising them. She merely stood, waiting expectantly, gazing out across the park. She seemed to be watching something in the far distance, Lily thought with a shiver. Something in the future, even. Cora was muttering at her, but Lily didn’t think Georgie could hear at all.
It only took the first few notes for Lily to realise that the music was the final key to the spell. The bored looks vanished, and all whispering stopped. A new brightness came into Georgie’s eyes, something that had been missing for weeks. She stood straighter, like a puppet, pulled up by her strings, and she reached out to join hands with Cora, and another girl with dark red hair. The huddles of children formed into stately dancing circles, moving around each other in an enchanted pattern. It meant something, Lily could tell. The music was pulling at her, begging her to join in, and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
‘Don’t,’ Henrietta snapped. ‘It isn’t right. Strong dark magic. Don’t let it pull you in. Look at them all!’
Lily knew she shouldn’t let the music sweep her into the circle, but it was so wild, and exciting. Like that moment in the theatre, when the whole audience was caught up, waiting to see how one of their tricks would turn out... She was drumming her fingers against the side of her chair with the beat, feeling her heart thump in time. Henrietta jumped off her lap, growling, as Lily went to stand up.
But someone grabbed her shoulders, forcing her back into the chair and shaking her, and Lily lost the pattern of the music, and stared up at Peter in surprise.
‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded crossly, rubbing her shoulders. His grip had hurt.
Peter glared at her, and waved at the roomful of dancing children.
Lily swallowed, feeling a little sick, as she watched what she had been about to join. The music still called to her so sweetly, and her magic danced inside her, but she stayed in the chair. Peter couldn’t hear it, of course. He didn’t have to fight the spell. Lily dug her nails into her palms, and imagined her boots nailed to the floor.
&n
bsp; They were dancing faster now, the circles breaking into lines that whirled in and out and round the girl on the throne, while her attendants moved their arms in graceful, powerful charms.
‘Where’s Georgie?’ Lily murmured, her heart suddenly thudding in a heavy panic. They were moving so fast, and somehow they all looked the same, their faces all eyes and wide-stretched mouths. She should be able to tell Georgie apart from Cora and Penelope, her white-fair hair against their dark curls, and the long red hair of the other girl. But they went past her in a blur of magic, calling something big, and angry, and dark. It surged in the air, and left a dank, dirty taste in Lily’s mouth like stagnant water stirred up with a stick. She wanted to run, and race away, but she couldn’t leave her sister.
Until all at once the music stopped in a jangle of wrong notes, and everyone shook themselves, coming to, and staring uncertainly at each other.
And Georgie looked across the room at Lily, her eyes dark with panic, and Lily realised that she had no idea where she was.
The girls had been told that they must be back in two days’ time, for the performance as part of the jubilee celebrations. Lily knew that there was no danger that Georgie would forget. Waking out of her spell-dream had left her limp and dazed, and Lily and Peter had to hold her up as they tottered back to the theatre.
‘You’re back!’ Their father, who had been sitting in the crook of Argent’s arm, writing a letter, jumped up, nearly flinging ink all over the dragon. The ink pot miraculously turned over, and the cap shut with a sharp little snap. Argent shook himself grumpily.
‘So what happened?’ he asked, in a rather sleepy growl.
‘Are you all right? You should have woken me, not gone chasing off after her, Lily! I only woke up a half an hour ago, and when Daniel told me what was happening I nearly choked.’ He put his arm around Georgie, who sagged against him, and reached out to pat Lily’s cheek.
