I’d tossed and turned, sheets tangling around me, to the steady ticking of the clock, to the dawn seeping through the darkness, to nightmare flashes of taunting bright green eyes laden with shadows.
To perfect lips forming commands and demanding my soul.
An ink blot formed as I set pen to paper.
Dear Master Noble,
I find you outrageous and arrogant, regardless of whether your reputation demands such behavior. Still, I accept your conveniently vague terms.
I crumpled the paper into a ball and chucked it next to the other five around the wastebasket, hidden in the morning shadows.
Dear Master Noble,
You leave me little choice. My brother’s life is at stake. I accept your veiled threats couched in indistinct terms.
Crumpled ball number seven.
Dear Master Noble,
The longer the delay, the worse for my brother. I accept you are an arroga—
Number eight plopped to the bottom of the basket like a slab in a tomb. It was obvious that I had to keep the correspondence short.
Dear Master Noble,
I accept.
Awaiting your reply,
I signed my name and sealed the note.
A knock exactly at noon announced the arrival of the messenger. It struck me that Noble had never asked for my address.
Our temporary sweep-turned-doorman-turned-butler cowered as I opened the door in his stead.
“Dark scum!” An elixir bottle broke through the failing enchantments on the brick stairs, smashing against them. “Rippers! Targeting the magic of a mage itself! You are going to pollute our neighborhood’s magic! Get off our street!”
I grabbed the front of the messenger boy’s cloak, pulled him inside, and slammed the door on the shouts from the street. Tinkling glass indicated another break in the solarium’s window. Our failing wards had no defense against the crowd’s anger.
The boy bobbed his head as I handed him the note. He held one out to me in return.
I stared at his outstretched hand. “What is this?”
“Instructions. Keep the paper on you. Do not put it down.”
I retrieved the note with shaking fingers. “Thank you. You may use the back entrance, if you wish.”
“Much obliged.” He bobbed his head and disappeared in that direction.
With a sharp glance at our grossly ineffective “butler,” who had no doubt soaked in every nuance of the conversation, I retired to my room.
The note was short, with its sloping letters and elegant swirls. I was to stay inside until a carriage came at midnight. The paper would lead me to the right one. I bristled at the command even as a resoundingthunkindicated what sounded like a head of cabbage hitting the front door.
I had until midnight to change my mind, but the long hours only reinforced my motivation. The hecklers in the streets continued, flinging rotten vegetables and spells against the sides of the house, adding cracks to the glass in the drawing room. Our house’s wards and enchantments, already weak, would soon collapse. The walls would fall without magic to support them, and it would become obvious what everyone already knew—that the Winters of Downing Street were a fallen house.
Ferris rose in the late afternoon only to down a headache tonic and slouch back to bed pleading illness. Sick on belladonna gin and punch root. I heard one of the maids slip into his room and wasn’t surprised to find him out cold a few hours later, an empty bottle tipped against his bedside.
The soft glow from the paper on the twelfth strike of the clock was accompanied by more relief than fear.
