“Do so,” her sister countered.
“Do not,” Cordelia insisted. “And he started it.”
“Well, when you two work it out, send him in. I want him to taste the madeleines I’m planning to make for the party. I’m dipping them in a light champagne icing and sprinkling them with candied orange peels.”
“He’s not coming,” Cordelia told her stubbornly.
Eustace backed up as Cordelia moved through to the hall and then the library, plopping herself on a sofa. She scurried behind her sister, aghast. “What do you mean he’s not coming? Cordelia, what have you done?”
“It’s not what I did. It’s what he did! We don’t need him anyway.”
“Yes, we do,” her sister argued. “Very much so. He has to come.”
“Well, he can’t,” she said, taking another swig of booze. “He’s leaving—left. He’s gone.”
“Stop him!” Eustace shouted at her. “Get him back here. Whatever it takes.”
“It’s too late for that.” Cordelia set the bottle on a nearby table. “We just have to do this on our own.”
Her sister shook her head. “Cordelia, in three days’ time we are luring our nemesis to this very house under the guise of a party where we will be surrounded by people who despise us, with no protection whatsoever. That gigantic bruiser of a man was all that was standing between us and the person who has been picking our family off like sitting ducks. Possibly for generations! And you just sent him packing? Why?”
Cordelia covered her face with both hands. She would not cry. “I don’t want to talk about this now. Can’t we just forget him and move on?”
Eustace made an exasperated sound. “We’ll deal with Gordon later. Maybe I can find him and talk some sense into him after he’s cooled down. Right now, I have something to show you.” She motioned for Cordelia to follow her to the desk in the study.
Cordelia skulked after her sister like a dog with its tail between its legs, dragging the brandy bottle with her. On the desk, the therimoire was splayed open.
Eustace pulled the bottle from Cordelia’s hand and set it onthe desk. “You cannot go to pieces on me right now, Cordelia Hazel Bone.”
“Okay, okay.” Cordelia crossed her arms. “What do you want to show me? I’m listening.”
Eustace’s eyes lit up like the sun had risen behind them. She picked up a small pouch that Cordelia recognized but couldn’t place and reached inside. “This,” she said, pulling something out and dropping it.
Cordelia bent over and saw that it was one of the carved teeth they’d discovered in the basement—the rune stones. It landed facedown on the book’s open pages and then quickly righted itself. Her eyes widened. “Did I just see that?”
Eustace nodded emphatically.
“Do it again,” she said.
Her sister snatched up the tooth and dropped it again. This time it rolled off the pages onto the desk, once more righting itself after it had stopped.
“Do they all do this?” Cordelia asked.
“Not all at once, but yes. Watch.” She turned the whole sack over this time and the rest of the teeth fell out, rolling here and there before they all eventually stopped. Several landed faceup, but of those, a few turned themselves over after they had stopped moving. And of the ones that fell facedown, three turned over to face them just as the first one had.
“Are they supposed to do that?” Cordelia asked, amazed.
Eustace shook her head. “Usually someone just reads them however they land. These are different,special.It was so dark down there that day we found them and I dropped a bunch on the floor, we must not have noticed if any of them turned over.”
Cordelia studied the teeth whose runes were exposed. “What do they mean?”
Eustace leaned closer. “This one here is the symbol formanorfriendship,” she said. “Or in some cases it can meancooperation.”
Cordelia looked at the weird littleMwith a bow tie on top.
“And this one meanswater,” Eustace said. “But it can also meanintuitionordreamsorfears.”
“It’s not a very precise method, is it?”
