“All right,” she says. “If that’s what you want. I’ll check on you later.”
After Rayne leaves, I message Ember I’ll be gone all day. Then I port to Gnarlton and knock on Sabrina and Sinora’s door.
* * *
Thirty years ago, following the deaths of Leda and Rex Blackburn, the Blackburns and the D’Orons swapped estates. Jaxan took over Mortal’s Gate, and Sabrina, Sinora, and Helen moved next door. It was a downsize for them but not by much. Both estates are haunting and expansive. From the exterior, they’re heartlessly symmetrical Gothic manor houses. Inside, they’re full of intricate woodwork, shadows and sharp angles, and dark and hidden corners. Cobwebs, if you don’t keep an orphan around to Vanish them.
“Sinora,” I say as a raindrop smacks between my eyes.
In the same way it is with Helen, it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking. She holds up the Lens of Intentions, enlarging a single eye as she quietly studies me. For the duration, her mouth is a tight, melancholy line.
“Can I come in for a few minutes? I have some questions aboutEmber to ask you.”
She drops her lens back in her blouse. “I see that you do,” she says. “Well, I suppose I expected as much. After I saw that first picture of you two in the paper, I thought, yes, he’ll be coming around.” She casts a furtive glance at the stone gargoyles, half sentient at her gates, and waves me in. “Come on inside from the cold.”
There’s a loud echo as we cross the two-story foyer, entering the dining room with a small hearth fire in the corner. A rustic, black candelabra hangs over the long, ebony oak table. Sabrina stands facing the back wall, whispering to the hearth flames.
“Sabrina,” her sister snaps, “go sit at the table with the Truth-Teller while I start the tea.” She pulls out a high-backed chair and points at the seat.
Sabrina vacantly follows her order, and Sinora disappears through the round, stone arch connecting the kitchen.
I pour two glasses from a large decanter of water in the center of the table, handing one to Sabrina as the enchanted decanter automatically refills. Instead of drinking her water, Sabrina lifts the crystal glass high in the air and holds it like a beacon. Arm upraised, her long bell sleeve slides down to her elbow, uncovering a black, iron bangle.
Magic suppressants.
“Sabrina.” She stops monitoring for changes in Sinora’s bustling sounds long enough for me to meet her eyes and ask, “Are you a Seven?”
Every witch’s Blessing is recorded in the palace registers, but Sabrina Blackburn’s isn’t in it.
She sets her glass down on the table and raises her hands, holding up most of her fingers. It takes me a minute, because the choices she makes about which fingers to hold up and which to put down are unconventional, but there are eight. She’s holding up eight of them.
“You’re an Eight?” I ask.
“I am,” she says softly.
I lean in to better hear her fluttery whispers.
“But I amnotstrong enough to be the second child he wanted. I won’t do it again. You can’t make me, Truth-Teller. You can’t. I won’t do it!”
“Hey,” I say to calm her. “I’m not here to make you do anything. But if the same thing’s happening to Ember, I want to know what’s going on.”
She traces the rim of her glass three times. “We wrote about it, but . . .” Her eyes drift out the back window and linger over the gloomy stretch of weeds between here and Mortal’s Gate. “I don’t know where it went.”
Sabrina draws a zipper across her lips as Sinora emerges through the wide archway with a tea tray, precariously balancing a sterling silver tea kettle, sugar bowl, creamer dish, and only two teacups for the three of us. I stand to take the rattling tray from her and set it down while Sinora sits beside Sabrina. Without missing a beat, she snatches Sabrina’s water glass and takes it away.
Sabrina hunches over the tarnished silver sugar bowl in the center of the table, animatedly pinching a pair of small tongs. “Do you likebonesin your tea?” she asks me. They are standard sugar cubes with no resemblance to bones.
“I do,” I say. “Two please.”
Sinora holds the tea kettle impatiently while Sabrina counts both sugar cubes aloud as she drops them into my teacup. “Bone oneeeee.”Plink. “Bone twooooo.”Plink.
I like Sabrina. When I was a kid, she petted Ven through the gaps in the fence, and on the nights Jaxan commanded me to sleep outside, she climbed over the wall and sat with me in the tall grass until sunrise. Years later, I found her in Jaxan’s study, swearing up and down she was the maid, until I looked at hersuspiciously, and as frank as Ember would, she said, “Fine then, Truth-Teller, tell him I’ve stolen it.” She left without another word.
Somehow, the water glass Sinora took away is back in Sabrina’s hands. She dumps it upside down and grins with delight as a cascade of water seeps through the burgundy table runner, penetrating to the dining table.
I cast a Drying spell and try to reconcile Sabrina’s personality with the other deteriorated witches I know.Theyfog. They shovel straw in twelve-hour shifts without realizing they’re in a prison. But Sabrina, despite staring at her reflection in the kettle like it’s her very first mirror, has moments of knowing where she is. She lowers her voice for secrets. She makes furtive eye contact with me when Sinora isn’t looking.
Frustrated, Sinora tells her sister to go upstairs.
