The Secret Witch

by Harvey, Alyxandra;

  Uncontrolled magic scratched at Tobias’s inner wards, and he pushed back until sweat glistened on his forehead. Denying his inherited magic was proving more and more difficult. Claws scraped him raw on the inside.

  Cormac slanted him a knowing glance. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” he said. “And for what?” Having no magic of his own in a powerful witching family, he couldn’t understand why Tobias refused to give in to his lineage. They argued over it at length. Especially as it might have saved his life the night the Sisters first attacked. Tobias thought the opposite: the added burst of magic might have made them strong enough to kill Cormac.

  “I’m fine,” Tobias said. He sounded cold and unemotional. It had taken him years to be able to speak at all when the wolf woke. Control was a finely hewn sword. “It’s gone now at any rate.”

  Greymalkin House sat in gloom across the street, the garden choked with weeds and windows grimy with dust. It had sat empty and derelict for decades, unseen to all but witching folk. Malevolent magic still pulsed within, leaking out tendrils of anger, despair, and sorrow. The Keepers set to watch it day and night always came away in need of saltwater baths and purifying sage smoke.

  Footsteps sounded behind them as one of those Keepers emerged from a concealing tree. Cormac turned his head, his expression dangerously bland.

  “I thought you were meant to be watching the house, Virgil,” Tobias said mildly, knowing Cormac wouldn’t be able to say anything mild at all. Virgil took too much delight in antagonizing him.

  “I was watching it.” He flicked imaginary dust off his cuff. “Some of us not only have magic, we also have the good sense to get out of the rain.” He nodded pointedly to Cormac’s wet hair.

  “And some of us take pride in our work,” Tobias said coldly. “Regardless of the weather.”

  Virgil’s smile turned ingratiating. No wonder Tobias spent so much time convincing Cormac not to punch him. “Of course, Killingsworth. No one denies you’re an ace Keeper. Especially considering Cormac’s dead weight you have to drag about. Don’t know why they keep you on, Cormac. You’re useless without magic.”

  Tobias looked down his nose disdainfully, knowing it infuriated Virgil. “Your intolerance is rather gauche, Virgil. Perhaps you ought to carry on with your duties.”

  He sniffed, bowing sharply. As a viscount in line to inherit an earldom, Tobias outranked Virgil both in the Order and in regular London society. “As you say. I’ll continue my rounds.”

  Tobias frowned. “Did you see how dilated his pupils were?” he said to Cormac when Virgil had walked stiffly away. “I haven’t seen eyes like that since my brother stumbled into that opium den. We’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

  Cormac glared down the street after him. “I intend to.”

  When a howl ululated across the foggy London streets, Tobias swore. There was a long pause of silence before a dog nearby began to bark fearfully. “Not exactly subtle,” Cormac remarked.

  “People will assume it’s a dog.” Tobias said wryly. “There are no wolves in England, of course.”

  “Of course,” Cormac returned, equally wry.

  The answering howl was piercing.

  And much, much closer.

  “That one came from the park.” Tobias dashed across the street, narrowly avoiding two horses pulling a cart piled with empty bottles. Hyde Park was dark as an ink blot and full of whispering leaves and animals.

  Not just animals. Wolves.

  There was a crunch of bones as someone shifted into wolf form and the bark of wolf to wolf, messages howled from the other side of London. Tobias broke through the trees, rabbits and mice fleeing at his approach. His nostrils flared as he cataloged the layers of scent on the night wind: lilac, earth, a badger’s den, iron, musk, wolf.

  Not just any wolf.

  His brother.

  “Ky’s here,” he told Cormac.

  “Bloody hell,” he replied wearily, knowing exactly where this was headed.

  Tobias melted into the shadows, assessing which direction the pack was going. He circled an oak and crouched low in a blackberry thicket, viciously controlling his inner wolf, who longed to join the others.

  Moonlight fell through the leaves as they approached, glinting off sharp teeth and the whites of too-human eyes. Tobias knew perfectly well his brother was at the front. There were at least four of them, possibly five. He heard the snap of twigs, the panting breaths. The first wolf to turn the bend and charge into view was tawny, with a patch of white on his chest. His long strides ate up the ground until he could have been flying.

  Tobias lunged out of the bushes. He stabbed his walking stick into the ground at a sharp angle. Startled, the wolf didn’t have time to alter his course. His legs splayed, scraping through mud. He slid sideways and somersaulted.

  The rest of the pack charged at Tobias and Cormac, growling. They stood shoulder to shoulder, with the wolves circling. Ky sprawled on the ground, cursing viciously as he completed the shift back to human form. He had dark blond hair, a well-defined jaw, and not a stitch of clothing.

  “What the hell, Tobias?” He spat leaves and rolled to his feet.

  As the wolves pressed closer, a young boy, fourteen at most, stumbled into the clearing, dropping a pack with a greatcoat pulled through the straps at Ky’s feet. He had three more packs slung over his shoulders and across his back. He still had pimples on his chin, and he was as thin as a sapling under his shirt.

  “Isn’t he a little young to be a Carnyx?” Tobias asked. Carnyx were named after the Celtic war trumpet used to instigate fear in the enemy. The group protected the packs from Wolfcatchers and hunters, and occasionally they protected other shifters as well.

  The boy pulled himself up proudly. “I’m in training.”

  “You carry their things.”

  “For which we’re grateful,” Cormac cut in with his charming smile. “I, for one, am quite relieved not to have these ugly sots roaming naked through the streets.” Clothes were not forgiving, and shifting between forms usually resulted in a naked human.

  “We were answering a warning call before you interrupted us, big brother.” Ky fumed. “I’m sure you heard it.”

  “I did.” By contrast, there was no inflection in Tobias’s voice.

  “Some of us don’t ignore our brothers,” Ky sneered. One of the wolves gave a yip like a laugh.

  Tobias kicked his pack over. “Get dressed, little brother. And let the Order handle it.”

  Scowling, Ky shrugged on a pair of breeches with a belt hung with daggers and pouches. “The Order has no business dealing in wolf matters.”

  “You have no way of knowing if this is a wolf matter,” he pointed out with cool and precise patience. “You just want an excuse to run wild, and you’re too old to indulge in theatrics, Ky. Now call off your mongrels,” he added when one of the wolves snapped at Cormac, hackles raised. “You know as well as I do that Cormac isn’t a threat.”

  Ky nodded to the suspicious wolf. “He’s right.” The wolf backed off but didn’t shift back to human.

  “Are you mad to shift?” Tobias snapped coldly. “Anyone could have seen you.”

  “In the park?” Ky scoffed. “And at night? I doubt it.”

  “You know better.”

  “I won’t be shackled like a lapdog, Tobias,” he said. “I’m not afraid of what I am. Unlike you.”

  “You’re a fool, Ky.”

  “And you’re a coward.”

  The air fairly sizzled. Barely leashed magic sparked between them like static electricity.

  “As a Keeper, investigating these matters is what I do, little brother” The brothers were nearly nose to nose.

  “By turning your back on your wolf,” Ky returned, “old man.”

  “Lawless family reunions are always so pleasant,” Cormac said lightly to the boy holding the packs, who cringed, turning his body sideways in subconscious submission. Cormac glanced at Tobias, his expression deceptively casual. “Shall
we carry on, Killingsworth? I don’t fancy having one of these beasts piss on my boots. They’re new.”

  Some of the tension cracked. Ky was still sneering and Tobias was cold as a marble statue, but they stepped apart. Ky stalked off, the wolves following him.

  “I hate to add insult to injury”—Cormac clapped Tobias on the shoulder—“but if you mean to carry out your new orders, we have a musicale to attend.”

  “My mother looks as though she is longing to stab me with her fish fork,” Gretchen murmured to her cousin Emma.

  Candlelight gleamed on enough silver to dazzle the eye, along with plates painted with delicate blue flowers, crystal wine goblets, and the fattest pink peonies Gretchen had ever seen. They bobbed their heavy scented heads, looking as bored with the whole affair as she was. Petals drooped over dishes of veal with olives, sweetbreads, stewed celery with beetroot pancakes, asparagus, potted venison, and ratafia cakes. An enormous silver soup tureen sat in the center, handles shaped like griffins with leaping hares all along the edges. As if one wanted rabbits running through their soup.

  The guests were stylish and polite; the ladies ate small morsels, and the men wore collar points, some so starched they could barely turn their heads. Conversation was a dignified murmur over the clink of silver cutlery. It was all very elegant and sophisticated.

  In other words, torture, pure and simple.

  Her mother, the very proper Lady Cora Wyndham, sent her another scolding glance. Even the sharp gleam of her impressive diamonds judged her.

  “Emma, distract my mother. Make it rain from the chandelier or blow that ridiculous wig right off Lord Chilcott’s head, won’t you? Preferably right onto my mother’s plate of sweetmeats.”

  Emma paused to consider. “Better not,” she decided with a regretful grin.

  Lady Worthing, their hostess and a dear friend of Gretchen’s mother, rose gracefully from her chair. “Ladies, let us leave the gentlemen to their port and retire to the parlor.”

  Gretchen leaped up like a salmon fighting its way upstream. Her chair scraped with an indecorous groan across the parquet floor. A footman caught it before it toppled backward. As she passed, her mother rapped her across the knuckles with her fan. Hard. “Decorum, Gretchen, if you please.”

  She insisted on acting as though the only thing of any great importance was training her son to be an earl, marrying her daughter to an earl, and acting like the perfect wife to an earl. Gretchen’s father wasn’t a witch and knew nothing about the secret London Gretchen was just beginning to navigate. Her mother wanted no part of the world of witchery, even though she was born into a family steeped in magic since the fourteenth century. Even now, after her daughter and nieces defeated the Sisters, she pretended it never happened. She was more concerned that Gretchen was unfashionably tanned.

  “What have you done?” her mother snapped, blocking her entry into the parlor.

  “What? Nothing!” Gretchen glanced down swiftly. She was wearing a perfectly lovely silk gown that floated around her ankles. If the dress was meant to be simple and evoke classical lines, why was she forced into constrictive stays? Shouldn’t she be able to breathe? Shouldn’t her liver not be quite so well acquainted with her spleen?

  “Your hem is dirty. And why were you late?” her mother asked. “You will answer me.”

  “I … um.”

  “Gretchen, I have been your mother your entire life. You cause more trouble than a houseful of adolescent boys.” She sniffed, looking horrified. “And you reek of magic.”

  She winced. “It’s only a little magic, Maman,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing voice.

  “It makes you a target, Gretchen,” she snapped, not sounding the least bit soothed. “Surely you must realize that by now.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “I think we should pull you out of that school,” her mother added suddenly. “You would benefit more from a proper finishing academy.”

  She was already pretending to attend lessons at a finishing school, instead of the Rowanstone Academy for Young Ladies. To the Beau Monde she was learning how to draw, speak French and Italian, play a harp, and embroider. In reality, she was learning the history of the witching families, how to work spells, and how to send her wolfhound-familiar out into the world. And also, sadly, embroidery. Adding hours and hours of actual curtsying, elocution, and deportment? She shuddered. “You can’t be serious.”

  “What has magic ever done for us?” her mother asked bitterly. “Besides poison my sister’s mind and divide my family?”

  “I know all about Emma’s mother,” Gretchen said quietly. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Lady Wyndham lifted her chin, retreating behind her customary haughty disdain. “She made her choice. And I made mine.”

  Gretchen wanted to say that Theodora made her choice in order to protect Emma, but her mother wouldn’t understand. She’d never see past a baby born on the wrong side of the blanket, never mind to a Greymalkin warlock. “It’s not that simple,” she said instead.

  “I’ll tell you what’s simple, Gretchen. Find yourself a husband before it’s too late. Social power is the only real power left to a woman. Use it.”

  “You can’t keep me from the academy,” she argued. “Maman, I’m a Whisperer. It’s already … uncomfortable.”

  “All the more reason to turn your back on that world.”

  “That’s not an option anymore. Aunt Theodora’s binding spell wore off. I am who I am, now, Maman. Whether or not you approve.”

  She pulled away and slipped into the parlor before her mother responded. Penelope slid her arm through Gretchen’s. “Do you want me to play a pirate’s song?” Penelope was an accomplished singer and already famous for her performances at the pianoforte. Lady Worthing’s dinner party was to be followed by the arrival of more guests for the musicale.

  “Tempting, but my mother would smack you with more than her fan,” Gretchen said.

  “She didn’t even notice last time.” Penelope grinned.

  “Girls,” Lady Wyndham snapped from the doorway. “Mingle!”

  “Honestly, my mother should work for the Order. She’s worse than a Keeper when it comes to tracking. I’m starting to feel like a wounded deer.”

  Emma snorted, joining them. “Try having antlers on your head.”

  “I thought One-Eyed Joe gave you a cameo for that very purpose,” Gretchen said as they wandered farther into the drawing room.

  “Your mother made me take it off before we went in for supper. She said it wasn’t appropriate evening wear.” She grinned. “I told her neither were antlers, and then she got all quiet and scary so I worked the Fith-Fath glamour to hide them myself.”

  The end of the room was cleared of furniture except for rows of chairs facing the pianoforte and harp in one corner. Beeswax candles dripped in silver candelabrums and sconces set into the cream-colored walls. The ceiling was a mosaic of frolicking lambs and rosy-cheeked cherubs. “Gah,” Penelope said, when she glanced up. “That’s ghastly.”

  “Why are there so many moths about?” Gretchen fanned one away from her face.

  “It’s been a bad spring for them,” Emma agreed. “My windows are covered at night.”

  “Insects in the drawing room.” Gretchen grinned. “My mother will turn rabid.”

  It was another half hour before the men joined the party in the drawing room. The other guests trickled in, trailing the scents of rain and the yellow London fog pressing at the windows. When Cormac, Viscount Blackburn, arrived, Penelope glanced at Emma. “If you and Cormac are still trying to pretend you barely know each other, you should probably stop looking at each other like that,” she pointed out. “Not to mention, you’re in very great danger of setting the carpet on fire. I’m positively blushing.”

  “You are not,” Emma said, though her own cheeks were pink. She looked away. Cormac and his friend crossed the room to greet their hosts.

  “Who’s that with him?” Gretchen wondered. The t
all blond man looked so icy and proper, she felt an instant need to wrinkle him. His cravat was white and spotless; it may as well have been made out of snow. Despite the chiseled Grecian-statue perfection of his features, there was something slightly dangerous about him.

  “That’s Tobias Lawless,” Penelope said, her long black curls sweeping over her shoulder as she tried to turn subtly on one heel to get a better look at him. “He took off his jacket the night of the fire at the Pickford ball, remember?”

  “No,” Gretchen said crisply. His blue eyes snapped onto hers as if he had heard her. The blasted man was looking down his nose at her. “I don’t.” He looked away dismissively. That was even worse.

  “Pity.” Penelope gave a little sigh. “He has lovely shoulders.”

  “You’re incorrigible.” Emma grinned, nudging her.

  “My mother says the human body is a beautiful miracle to be appreciated.”

  “My mother says the physical body is something a lady ignores.” Gretchen rolled her eyes. “Of course she only says that when my nose is itchy or I’m starving for cake.”

  Emma’s mother, having recently turned herself into a deer, didn’t say much of anything at all.

  “Why is he staring at us?” Gretchen grumbled. “Surely he’s seen the Lovegrove witches before.”

  “He’s not staring at us.” Penelope smirked. “He’s staring at you.”

  “Don’t be daft,” she said, dismissing the very notion. She winked. “I haven’t done anything worth staring at yet.”

  “And you’ll keep it that way, Gretchen Thorn,” her mother snapped from behind her shoulder. “Tobias Lawless, Viscount Killingsworth, is heir to the Starkwood earldom. So if he’s looking at you, you’ll smile prettily.”

  It explained why all the ladies watched him over their fans, but not why he was watching her.

  “And he is unmarried,” her mother announced in a fervent whisper best suited to declarations involving kings and kingdoms.

  “Oh, mother,” Gretchen groaned. She met Emma’s sympathetic glance. Penelope was too busy looking curiously at Tobias.