Again it shrank back—not in defeat, oh, no—but startled that they had dared to move against it.
And that was enough—just enough—for Mem’sab and the jinn to rush past bearing Sarah, for Nan and Neville and Grey to follow in their wake, and for the knight to slam the door shut and follow them down the stairs—
Stairs which, with every footstep, became more and more solid, more and more real, until all of them tumbled out the front door of Number Ten, Berkeley Square, into the lamplit darkness, the perfectly ordinary shadows and smoke and night sounds of a London street.
Neville fluttered down, panting, to land on the ground. Sahib slammed the front door shut behind them and leaned against it, holding his side, and breathing heavily. Gone were his armor, his sword—he was only ordinary Sahib again, with a cane to help his bad knee. Selim—and not the jinn—put Sarah down on the pavement, and Grey fluttered down to land on her shoulder. Neville looked up at Nan and quorked plaintively, while Mem’sab, clad in a proper suit, but with her skirt hiked up to scandalous shortness, did something that dropped her skirt from above her knees to street length again.
“Are you two all right?” she asked anxiously, taking Sarah by the shoulders and peering into her face, then doing the same with Nan.
“Yes’m,” Nan said, as Sarah nodded.
“Faugh,” Sahib coughed, as he straightened. “Let’s not do that again any time soon, shall we? I’m getting too old for last-minute rescues.”
Last minute rescues—‘cause we went off alone, like a pair of gormless geese! “Oh, Sahib—Mem’sab—” Nan felt her eyes fill with tears, as it suddenly came home to her that her protectors and benefactors had just put themselves into deadly danger to save her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’ mean—”
“Nan, Nan, you aren’t to blame!” Sahib said immediately, putting one strong arm around her shoulders. “You did nothing that you shouldn’t have done, and if you hadn’t been so careful, we wouldn’t have known where you were until it was too late! No, it was our fault.”
“It certainly was,” Mem’sab said grimly. “But it was someone else’s as well… and there is going to be a reckoning when I find out who. But let’s get away from here first. I don’t altogether want to find out if the bindings keeping that thing confined to this house will hold under provocation.”
Sahib took Sarah’s arm, giving her Grey to tuck inside her coat, and Selim offered a hand to Neville, who was so tired he hopped onto it without a protest, and then lifted the raven onto Nan’s shoulder. As they walked quickly away from the building, Mem’sab continued.
“Someone came to me a few days ago with a story about this place, how some haunt was making it impossible to rent out and he was in dire difficulty because of it. He wanted Sarah, or me, or both of us together to lay the spirit—but I have heard all of the stories about this address, and I knew better than to try. Something came to dwell there, over a hundred years ago, and it is not a thing to be trifled with. Men have died here, and more than one, and many people have gone mad with fear. Whatever that thing was—”
“Is old,” Nan put in, with a shudder. “Real, real old. I dunno how it got ‘ere, but it ain’t no spook.”
“Well, evidently this person decided to force our hand,” Sahib said thoughtfully—and as Nan looked up when they passed under a streetlamp, she saw that both his face and Selim’s were grim. “I believe that I will have a private word with him.”
“As will I—although I am sorely tempted to tell him that his devil has been laid, and suggest he spend a night there himself,” Mem’sab said, with deep anger in her voice. “And from now on, we will contrive a better way of bringing you girls if I should need you.”
“Please,” Sarah said, in a small voice. “What happened to Nan and Neville? And you and Sahib and Selim?”
Sahib cleared his throat awkwardly; Selim just laughed, deep in his throat. “You saw us as we seem to be—”
“Are,” Sahib corrected dryly.
“Are, then—when we are Warriors of the Light,” Selim concluded.
“Though how Nan happened to slip over into a persona and power she should not have until she is older—much older—I cannot imagine,” Mem’sab added, with a note in her voice that suggested that she and Nan would be having a long, a very long, talk at some point in the near future. Then she sighed. “Pray heaven I will not need to begin teaching you ancient Celtic any time soon.”
But, for now, Nan was beginning to feel the effect of being frightened nearly to death, fighting for the life of herself and her friends, and somehow being rescued in the nick of time. She stumbled and nearly fell, and Sahib sent Selim in search of a cab. In a good neighborhood like this one, they were not too difficult to find; shortly, both the girls were lifted in to nestle on either side of Mem’sab, birds tucked under their coats with the heads sticking out, for Nan had left Neville’s hatbox and was not at all inclined to go back after it. And in the shelter of the cab, Neville providing a solid oblong of warmth, and the drone of the adult voices above her head, safe at last, she found herself dropping off to sleep.
But not before she heard Mem’sab saying, “I would still like to know how it was that the child came into her Aspect without any training—and where she found the Words of Power for invoking the Holy Light.”
And heard Grey answer.
“Smart Neville,” she said in her sweetest voice. “Very smart Nan.”
***
The children and birds were tucked up safely in their beds, and Sahib had gone out for that “private word” with the one who ostensibly owned Number Ten. He had taken both Selim and Agansing with him, leaving Karamjit and Isabelle herself to stand watch over the house. Karamjit had made the rounds, reinforcing his shields and wards, and she had gotten out the set of Elemental Wards given to her a long time ago, before she had left for India, and placed them at the cardinal points of the grounds. She had no way of knowing on her own if they were still powerful, those little four-colored pyramids of stone and glass, but she had faith in the friends who had given them to her. She had seldom had to use them, twice in India, once in England, but never since her return.
The troubling thing about this was that she was not altogether certain the incident had been one man’s ill-conceived attempt to clear his property of the evil that haunted it. In fact, the more she thought about it, the less likely that seemed. She sat in her favorite chair beside the fire, and though the fire was warm, her spirit felt chilled by the prospects of that eventuality.
“Karamjit?” she said to the shadow standing at the window. “Are you as uneasy about this evening as I am?”
“At least, Shining Star,” he replied grimly. “We have not ended what this night began. And the thing behind that door may be the least and most obvious of the evils we face. Sahib is returned.”
She leaped to her feet as the front bell rang, and with Karamjit behind her, hurried to the front hall.
“Not here,” Frederick said, sotto voce, as he handed his hat, coat, and gloves to Sia to take away. She nodded, and all five of them returned to the warmth and privacy of his study.
“The bird,” he said succinctly, as he settled into his chair, “has flown. Not only that, but he was a bird in false feathers. I am reliably told, and Selim has verified, that there was no deception on the part of our quarry’s servants, that Mister Benson has not been resident in his townhouse for a month. He has been salmon fishing in Scotland, and knowing the gentleman’s sporting reputation, that is not an opportunity he would have forgone even for a death in the family. So whoever it was that called himself Benson had no right to that name and no financial interest in the property.” He grimaced. “We have, as young Nan would say, been gammoned.”
Isabelle took a deep breath. “Which leaves us with the question of why someone would lure those two children there. If Nan had not told Karamjit where she was going—we would not have known where they were until they were found.”
“Which would not have been until morning.”
Frederick’s eyes were dark with rage. “And we know what state they’d have been in at best. If they had lived. At least four people who remained overnight in that room have died, and several more have gone mad. Someone wanted those two children dead or insane. Specifically those two children, and not you as well, my heart, because the cabby was sent at a time when you were away from the school.”
Isabelle felt her eyes widening, and a cold rage welling up in her heart. “So we have two linked mysteries to unravel—who and why.”
He nodded. “And when we have those answers, we need something more. We need to know what we are going to do about it.”
A deep growl, like that of an angry lion, interrupted him. “Only let me have my hands upon the dog, Sahib,” said Karamjit.
“And I,” added Selim darkly. “The Prophet does not forbid—”
“Peace,” Agansing said unexpectedly. “This has a larger shape than someone who wishes harm to our children. Perhaps it is not what they are, but what they may become that is at issue here. That they may be a great threat in the future. Perhaps we should first see if other such children have been—negated—of late. If so, then we deal with someone who takes the long view, and is willing to eliminate opposition before the opposition is more than a potential.”
Isabelle wrinkled her brows. “But how can we possibly discover that?” she protested. “It would be like trying to find footprints after the tide has washed them away! Even if children have been—murdered—how could we find out who they were and what they could have been had they grown up?”
Agansing raised an eyebrow. “There is one here who can discover that, Mem’sab.”
Frederick’s eyes widened, and Isabelle’s hand came involuntarily to her throat.
“Sarah,” they said, at the same time.
Agansing nodded. But it was Karamjit who raised the objection they all felt. “Not until all other ways have been tried,” he said, in that tone that meant he would not countenance any other course of action.
“Peace,” Agansing said again, this time with a suspicion of a twinkle in his eye. “We are your Long Friends, Lion. When have you known us to do otherwise?”
Karamjit visibly relaxed. “Never,” he admitted. “It is my anger speaking, not my reason.”
Isabelle closed her eyes a moment, then said, reluctantly, “This does tend to point in the direction of Magic, rather than the Esoteric, you know.”
Frederick raised an eyebrow, then sighed. “And you, my heart, are the only one of us with contacts in those circles. I am loathe to ask it of you, but I can only suggest that you will need to pursue them.” Then he shook his head and added with a smile, “It could be worse. It could be the Esoteric rather than the Magic. And some of our friends are a trial even to my patience.”
Isabelle thought over the last party they had attended, when Aleister Crowley had swept in wearing a flamboyant scarlet cape, circled the room without saying a word to anyone, then swept out again, and as a few people bristled, assuming insult, Beatrice Leek had announced in a voice loud enough to be heard in all parts of the room, “Don’t mind Aleister, darling, he’s just being invisible again.”
Trying to get any two of that lot to move in the same direction was like trying to train cats to pull in a tandem harness. “You’re right, as usual, my love,” she said and put her hand to her temple. “In the meantime, I am exhausted, and so should the rest of you be. If we sleep on the problem, we may be given some direction.”
At least, that was something she could always hope for.
5
THE next day, everything was pretty much back to normal, which was both a relief and a bit of a vexation for Nan. For Sarah, it was unalloyed relief; she had confessed to Nan last night that she never, ever wanted to see or even think about “that Thing.” But Nan, like the Elephant’s Child, was full of “ ‘satiable curiosity” and like Rikki-tikki-tavi, if she could not get the answers immediately, she was bound and determined to “run and find out.”
So when her hour with Agansing came around, before he even opened his mouth to begin her breathing exercise, she forestalled him with, “Master Agansing, what was that ‘orrible Thing?” And for a very long moment, there was no sound in the Conservatory but the hiss of the steampipes and the drip of water.
Now, at the Harton School it was the policy of the adults to be as absolutely honest with the pupils as they could. Sometimes the answer to a question was “I don’t know.” Often, it was, “I know, but I want you to go find out for yourself, and I will help you.” Very rarely it was “I don’t think you are old enough to need that answer, but I promise when you are, I will tell you.” This last was seldom if ever invoked for Nan; as a streetchild, there was very little she was “too young” to know, and most of the things under that heading she probably knew already, anyway. The main use for that particular answer to Nan was to let her know as subtly as possible that she was not to impart that information either, if one of the other pupils asked her.
So Agansing merely sighed for the disruption of his lesson, and answered, “I do not know, Missy Nan. I know that it is old, and we are of the opinion that it is a thing more of Magic than of spirit.”
Now, this would be the first time—ever!—that Agansing had used that word with reference to things Nan’s gran would have labeled “uncanny.” He had always spoken of “mental discipline” and “the full use of all of the senses” and “transcending the physical” and the like. She looked at him uncertainly.
“Thoughtcher said there ain’t no such thing as magic,” she retorted.
“I said nothing of the sort,” Agansing replied with unruffled dignity. “I said that we do not use such a thing, nor use that name. I never said it did not exist. There are two sorts of ways in which one can manifest Power,” he continued. “One is to use the Power that is within us all, which is what we do here, myself, Karamjit, Selim, Sahib, and Mem’sab. And you, and Missy Sarah, and some of the other children, of course.”
Odd. He never had come out to tell her which of the other children had Talents. For that matter, neither had any of the other adults. Briefly, she wondered why. Was this one of those things she was supposed to find out for herself? Or was this a reflection of the careful way in which the adults guarded the privacy of all the children?
“The second way, however, is to use the Power that exists around us, often through an intermediary creature, either by means of its cooperation, or its coercion. That is Magic. That is what Missy Sarah’s parents can do, though we cannot.”
She gaped at him. “They can?” This was news to her. She wondered if it was news to Sarah.
“But they cannot teach Sarah in the use of her Talents, nor do they have any understanding of them. This is why she is here.” He shrugged. “At any rate, we believe that creature is a twisted creature of Magic, something called an Elemental, although which it could be, or what Element it owes its form to, we are not equipped to tell. This is why it is not like an ordinary haunting, which we could banish, with some work. But since it is clearly a creature either powerful enough, transmuted enough, or both, for ordinary mortals to see and be affected by, it is quite beyond us to do anything about it. And I can tell you nothing more on that subject, and very little on the subject of Magic. You must ask Mem’sab, though she may not answer you. And now, you will assume the position of meditation.”
Her mind buzzing, she obeyed. And despite her curiosity eating at her, she kept her mind on her lessons, enough so that Agansing gave her a “Well done, under the circumstances. You may go.”
The next lesson was History, and after that, she helped the ayahs get the little ones down for a nap. But she kept thinking about Magic…
Now, given what she had already been learning, she was quite prepared to believe that the sort of Magic you found in fairy tales was real. What she had difficulty in grasping was that there was something that Mem’sab and Sahib couldn’t master.
After some consideration, she decided that she wo
uldn’t ask Mem’sab about it. Not just yet. Last night had been hard on everyone; it might be best to let things settle for a bit before she started asking questions. Especially since there was no telling just where those questions might lead, because it might be to a place where she really didn’t want to go.
***
Isabelle was paying a call on an old acquaintance, and she wasn’t entirely certain what her reception would be.
It was an acquaintance she had last seen before she had left, brokenhearted (or so she had persuaded herself) for India. Somehow, in all the years she and Frederick had lived in London, she had not been able to bring herself to renew those old friendships. The one or two from those days who had sought her out had made the first overtures, not she.
But after all, she was in a very different social circle from theirs, and far lower in class, as merely the daughter of a country vicar. She had been out of their social class back then, too—but she had deluded herself for a while that social distinctions did not matter. The vicar and his family were always welcome in the homes of the ennobled and wealthy—provided, she now knew, that they did not overstep their place, nor (in the case most especially of a daughter) dare to think they could actually fit in…
***
She felt the old bitterness creeping into her thoughts, and ruthlessly throttled it down. Don’t be a fool, she scolded herself. If you were to ask most of them if they would trade places with you, if they were honest with themselves, they would. How many of those girls she had once called “friend” were now shackled in loveless marriages to men whose sole qualification for the position of husband was a pedigree, wealth, and the interesting distinction of being an Elemental Mage? Half, surely. Among the Elemental Masters, there was the commonly-held sentiment that if one was not wedded for family or love by the time one reached the age of twenty-one, the best one could do would be to at least marry someone appropriate, of the right breeding, from whom one would not have to conceal one’s magic, even if you scarcely knew the prospective spouse, and had less in common with her than an Oxford don with an Irish bricklayer.
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