“No need to panic.” A faint smirk tugs at Beresford’s full lips, twitching the right side of his beard. “It was a compliment.”
“I have to go.” I jump up from the stool. “I can’t stay in here. Excuse my rudeness, but I need to get outside.”
He doesn’t step out of the doorway, and he’s filling up the entire space.
“Please move.” My voice is breathless, my fingers trembling, my palms and the back of my neck damp with sweat. “Please.”
“Or what?”
Or a demon could burst out of thin air and wreck this beautiful room. “Something bad will happen.”
“Did you have too much to drink, perhaps? Are you going to vomit on my shoes?”
I’m breathing fast, and yet none of the gasped inhales are satisfying. My heart is being crushed, it’s aching in my chest, it’s bigger than my ribcage, louder than church bells.
I step closer to Beresford and look up at him, panic and pleading in my gaze. “Let me go.”
His body seems huge, mountainous, dizzyingly magnetic. I can smell the pine and citrus scent of his cologne. His eyes widen, and his chest rises and falls with a single heavy breath, almost as if my presence and my scent are affecting him, too.
Then he steps aside.
I flee from him, desperate to leave the suddenly stifling humidity of the greenhouse. As I run, he calls after me, “It was an invitation.”
Two men in blue livery open the doors for me, and I rush out into the night. The cold air whips my face, plunges into my lungs, and breaks me out of the terrifying spiral of my own panic. I run along a dark garden path, between tall hedges, until I can’t see the greenhouse. Up ahead there’s a clearing with a grassy circle in the center, and I race toward it, my skirt clutchedin both hands. I drop to my knees in the moon-silvered grass, then let the skirts fall from my fingers and crumple around me.
I bend over, gratefully drinking the cold air, welcoming its chill against my burning skin. Nothing appeared in the greenhouse—no demons, no unnatural creatures. I’m fine. Everything is normal. After all, I recently summoned three demons in two days. It’s unlikely that I would summon anything else so soon. If I did, it would mean I’m worse than ever, and that’s simply not true—
A thin wail emerges from the hedge directly ahead of me. Something thrashes amid the tightly woven branches, about halfway between the ground and the top of the hedge.
“Shit,” I whisper.
I still remember the first time I heard that word. It escaped my mother’s lips when I summoned my third demon, right at the center of the dinner table. Ever since my father left, Mama has been much more liberal with her profanity. She says that curse words are the seasoning of language, meant to intensify its flavor.
Slowly I rise to one knee on the grass and unbuckle one of my shoes. They’re the least fashionable part of my outfit, because fine shoes are hard to fake. Even dyeing and embellishing them can only accomplish so much. The soles of this pair are chunky and sturdy, and I heft the right one in my hand, gauging its usefulness as a weapon. I limp toward the hedge on one bare foot, all my nerves alight, eyes fixed on the spot where something is struggling and wailing in the hedge.
I summoned a creature, and it’s stuck. I need to set it free, but I must also be prepared to defend myself. Sometimes the demons can be dangerous, even if they don’t attack. I remember one whose wings ended in talons as long as my hand, and there was another who spewed acid when startled.
The demons are often injured when they arrive, like the winged mice I summoned in Wormsloe. I don’t know if it’s thejourney that causes the damage, or if the wounds were inflicted prior to their summoning. Usually they’re too frightened or too wild for us to help them, and the best thing for everyone is to set them free so they can seek refuge and healing in their own way. A few times, though, I’ve been able to stitch up a cut or staunch some bleeding before the creature fled or we had to usher it outside. Anne even has a soothing balm she developed for just such occasions. She rarely gets to apply it, but whenever a demon will let her tend its wound, she’s thrilled.
The creature in the hedge is flailing frantically. If it wasn’t already injured, it’ll tear itself up against the twigs before I can manage to get it out. Has Anne brought any healing balm with her tonight? Unlikely. Only Mama brought a bag with her—the beaded one she purchased shortly after her wedding to Papa. She has kept it carefully all these years, only bringing it out for the very finest occasions.
“Hush,” I croon to the thing in the hedge, creeping nearer. “Calm down. Give me a moment to help you get out of there.”
Another wail, another panicked rustle. A few rags of cloud lessen the moonlight, and I lean closer to the wall of intermeshed twigs, trying to penetrate the darkness between them. A beady black eye glints at me.
Holding my breath, I reach out with the shoe, pushing it into the hedge and using both it and my left hand to pry the branches outward and down, creating a hole.
With a violent flutter, the creature bursts out of the opening, flying right at my face. I scream and jerk away. I’ve lost my balance—I fall backward as the demon streaks up into the sky.
Hands catch me beneath my arms and set me upright. The rich scent of pine trees and oranges fills my nostrils.
“Beresford,” I gasp, pulling away and turning to face him. “Did you follow me?”
“I wanted to see if you needed help. Clearly you did.” He frowns at the shoe in my hand. “What were you doing?”
“I was…” I glance at the hedge, then at the sky. “Helping.”
“Helping what? A bird?”
