“No!” shouted both Elias and Malcolm in tandem.
And Hattie sighed. Loudly.
“Hands are tools,” Lem observed, “but what if the removed pieces are also?”
“What?!” said Errol, looking down at the discarded pile of wooden splints and shapes. “Oh, my God!”
“Hattie,cariad,” Rhys’s voice called from down the hall. “Come away from there before you crack a tooth.”
And she did, though watching Rhys lounge in her mangled dressing gown was probably not much better, at least until he had begun to suggest avenues of revenge while attempting to toss little candied raisins into her mouth from across the room.
She caught four. She did not catch twelve.
When Ruby appeared a few moments later, the other woman caught all that were thrown in her direction. Ten, if anyone was counting, which Harriet was not.
“Did I tell you about the keepsake cards?” Hattie asked, once the raisins had been exhausted and clouds had given them a nice, blue tint to the parlor. “The new one?”
“‘New one’?” Ruby asked, stifling a yawn. “Rhys, give me some of that Turkish delight.”
“What Turkish delight?” he mumbled through a full mouth as he made it disappear in perhaps the most inelegant illusion of his life.
“Charming,” said Ruby, frowning. “You’ve got a sugar mustache.”
“Oh, you did finally grow one, after all,” Hattie teased, getting a glower from Rhys.
Behind them, from the direction of the kitchen, there was a loud cheer of triumph, complete with whooping and exclamations of genius.
Hattie rolled her eyes.
“Where’s my pig?” Ruby asked, turning to Hattie. “When you go get this mysterious missive, bring my pig.”
“She’s sleeping,” Hattie said, though there was no way to know if that was true.
In truth, she just did not want to share. Peach had spent an hour this morning attempting to work out the mathematic, geometrical matter of how to get onto the human bed. She had failed, of course, with those stubby, little legs, but Hattie reckoned it was because the little pig had wished to snuggle her mistress specifically.
Certainly not the traitor with a wooden puzzle who had left their bed under false pretenses.
It was only the sound of the triumphant army coming toward the parlor that got Hattie up off the chaise and marching toward the bedroom, in search of both creature and cryptic missive.
By the time she had returned, it seemed most of their celebration had ended, and the burst of revelry had dissipated back into exhausted repose.
“What’s this?” Libba asked when she appeared. “Are those my trousers?”
“No,” lied Rhys, crossing his legs under him with a shimmer of metallic embroidery flashing like the garment itself was trying to tell the truth. “Not anymore.”
Hattie set Peach down and watched as she made an immediate, enthusiastic run for Libba, who was the only person in the room still holding food.
“This is my croissant,” Libba informed the pig, whilst breaking off a corner to surrender.
Elias was looking at the tissue-covered card in Hattie’s hand with an expression of sudden concern. “Ah,” he said to her. “We’re doing that now, are we?”
“Everyone is here,” she pointed out, and then she counted them to be certain. “Yes, eight. All of us.”
“Nine, if you include our new sibling there,” Rhys quipped, nodding at the pig and then holding his hands up in apology at the impatient look Hattie cut in his direction.
Elias sighed, crossing the room to stand next to Hattie, and took the card from her hands. “I brought some of Willa’s keepsake cards from her various correspondences to the showcase yesterday, as you may recall,” he said. “There were seven of them when I arrived. When we left, there were eight.”
Hattie blinked. When he’d said the wordseven, she’d seen the flash of yellow, heard the viola strings. When he’d saideight, she’d leaned closer to him, as though his storm clouds and smoke might shelter her.
