“Once we are at my house.” Prospero tugged her forward again. “If we were seen, there would be consequences.” She directed Ellie along the street, guiding her toward what looked like an elegant Victorian house. It was dark, somber, foreboding, albeit smaller than any Victorian home Ellie had seen in New England.
“Are you expecting violence?” Ellie whispered, looking around and noticing most people looked away from Prospero as if afraid.
“Oh, I can handle violence,” Prospero said lightly as she led Ellie up the short set of stairs to what Ellie presumed was her front door. Prospero glanced at her briefly. “I have a reputation for being vicious that—while not precisely flattering—is not inaccurate. I can keep you safe if you permit it.”
Swoon,Ellie’s libido murmured.
Stop that,her common sense argued.
Prospero continued. “What I most need right now is you, so please come into my home.”
Ellie hated that she saw herself as weak, but it was hard to fathom being the sort of person who could stand up to a force like Prospero.
Better to be swept in her wake, perhaps.
“Okay…” Ellie stepped inside the house, not taking note of much other than the exterior’s somberness.
Directly inside, she saw a tiny woman in a bright red apron over a tailored jumpsuit. If not for the shocked look on her face, Ellie would have said something that might have been accidentally rude. The woman looked like a doll, perfectly shaped but tiny enough that an infant would outweigh her.
Prospero shoved the door shut, turning a series of locks as she said, “Bernice, I have a guest.”
“You don’t say,” the miniature woman retorted. “I’m not so old that my vision’s gone.”
Prospero, fierce and assertive woman that she was, gave the woman a sheepish look. “I am anxious that we will be seen. I need no one to enter my home. No one at all.”
“And who isthisthat we ought to be concerned?” The woman clapped her palms together, sending a cloud of flour into the air.
“A remedial witch who—”
“You snatched aremedial witch?” Bernice sounded horrified. Her voice grew higher and higher as she continued. “She’s not even a graduate of the college? A brand-new witch? What were you thinking? That man’s already trying to argue they ought to siphon you and—”
“What man?” Ellie interjected.
“The headmaster at the college where you are to be.” Prospero took her hat from Ellie and hung it on a rack. “When new witches awaken, the headmaster and I go to retrieve them so they can attend the college.”
“I see.” Ellie sat down on the shoe bench. “So assuming this is not a dream, I’m truant before even beginning? Will they arrive here? The authorities, I mean.”
“He’ll go sideways looking for you when he realizes you’re missing, then he’ll come to me, and I’ll magically find you.” Prospero shrugged as she said it, but the look Bernice gave her was stern enough to make Ellie flinch.
“He’ll know she vanished. He’ll know you are involved.” Bernice shook a flour-white finger at Prospero.
“And I’ll truthfully tell him I found her over here in Crenshaw,” Prospero rebutted with a harsher tone. “She was in the west meadow. Standing there alone and confused. What would anyone do?”
“Take her to the castle,” Bernice muttered. “One of these days, you’ll cross a line too far, young missy!”
Ellie leaned against the wall. This was all seeming a touch stranger than the coma dream she had expected, not that she’d thought overmuch about coma dreams, mind, but who hadn’t imagined what sort of fictional dream world they’d inhabit?
“This really isn’t a dream, is it? None of it?”
Bernice gave her a kindly smile. “It’s not. This is your waking state. You simply feel a wee bit off because of the magic filling all your curves and corners.”
“And the snakes, the pavement thing…” Ellie looked from one woman to the other. “That was all real. I made snakes.”
“Quite a feat for a remedial witch, in fact.” The tiny woman positively beamed at Ellie. “You are powerful—as is obvious in that you arrived without aid. Rare thing,thatis.”
Prospero cleared her throat. “I believe I owe you a meal, Miss Brandeau.”
“And some answers,” Ellie added. “Rather a lot of them.”
