“MyCharlotte,” Mrs. Pettifer amended, since the girl in question was her daughter.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Delphine.” Miss Plim lifted the sandwich to her lips then lowered it again with an expression of vague revulsion. “You know that, as the Prophesized One, Charlotte belongs to the entire Wicken League.” In other words, herself. She was after all, as its leader, the very embodiment of the League. (Or the archetype. Or whatever noun necessary to justify Charlotte being in her control.)
Mrs. Pettifer gave a sigh as complex as her tightly curled coiffure. “Don’t mention that prophecy. I still maintain Lettice just wanted to predict smaller bustles and higher hemlines.”
“Balderdash. I heard her—”
“You dictated to her.”
“—and sheclearly saidthe true heir of Beryl Black would come, bringing in a new era of greatness. Then she pointed at you. Seven months later, Charlotte was born.”
Mrs. Pettifer recalled the scene with distaste. It had quite ruined her wedding day. The fact Lettice had died later that night only served to further inspire general belief in her prediction—mostly because the League witches knew a warning not to ask questions when they saw one in the form of a knife having accidentally fallen into the back of an elderly woman while she slept.
Then again, scandal would have erupted had Charlottenotbeen prophesized somehow. Witches disliked seeing people go about their lives in random fashion; it was altogether untidy. Why, only yesterdayMrs. Pettifer herself had been predicted by various cards, crystals, and passing clouds to spend the week playing tennis, buying that charming pink hat in Harrod’s, and alas, having afternoon tea with Judith.
“Lettice could at least have waited until I was on my honeymoon to announce her prophecy,” she said with a bitter look at her sister.
Miss Plim would have shrugged had that not been unladylike (and rather difficult to do when one’s posture is even stiffer than an Englishman’s upper lip). “There was no time to waste. Rumor had it Margaret Cuttle was about to pay a medium to predict her granddaughter was the One. Can you imagine anything so unscrupulous?”
Mrs. Pettifer thought of Lettice’s body in its blood-soaked bed, and decided changing the subject was advisable. “If you feared Charlotte marrying,” she said, “why did you insist on her receiving such a thorough education?”
“The risk was necessary. Even if she weren’t the Prophesized One, Charlotte is a Plim, and therefore needed to be educated with her heritage in mind.”
Plim women had been witches for almost two hundred years, although this did not equate to a blood inheritance of magic. Their power came from a Latin incantation Beryl Black had found in an old sea-washed bottle while digging a grave for her husband on the island where he’d shipwrecked them. (He asked her what the bottle was; she told him to go back to sleep.) After Beryl realized the incantation could move any object, regardless of weight, she used it to fly a local’s hut back to England, where she shared her tale with the ladies in her book club. Thus the Wicken League was born. (And a subgroup of lesser importance, comprising ladies whose book club contributions had involved drinking too much wine and reading aloud lurid scenes from penny-dreadful novels; they degraded the art of witchery into the crude practice of flying houses and declared themselves the Wisteria Society. The Wicken League had another name for them, too impolite to record here.)
One of the first witches was Andromeda Plim, whobetrayed Beryl to the authoritiesarranged for her darling friend’s early retirement. Once Beryl wassafely tried and hangedensconced in the countryside, Andromeda took over her leadership role, and a Plim had ruled the League ever since. So it was an inheritance that involved blood, just notPlimblood.
Charlotte’s role as the next leader could not be left in the soft hands of Mrs. Pettifer, who believed in such nonsense as “love” and “quality of life.” Miss Plim had instead installed a strict regime of intellectual advancement and psychological repression that would have left boarding school headmistresses weak at the knees. And the results had proven as excellent as her crystal ball predicted they would. At nine, Charlotte had poured a perfect cup of tea while sitting in a different room from the tea service. At nineteen, she had stolen the earrings from Princess Beatrice’s earlobes without anyone noticing. She was the apex of Plimmishness. Put a glass or plate down in front of her and she would be utterly incapable of not moving it, even by the merest part of an inch. One day she would take charge of the Wicken League, fulfilling the prophecy and allowing Miss Plim to retire—i.e., stay on ruling from behind the scenes until she was at last dragged away to her grave.
“I should like to see Lottie happy,” Mrs. Pettifer said with another sigh.
“You would,” Miss Plim muttered sourly. She reached for a new sandwich but withdrew her hand empty. “Caviar. Really, Delphine, what is with this nautical theme? Do you not have any good, sensible Marmite?”
Just then came a banging of the front door, and footsteps hurried across the entrance hall. The ladies glimpsed a gray-clad figure dashing past the drawing room.
“Charlotte?” Miss Plim called, her voice as sharp as a hook. “Is that you?”
The momentary silence seemed to wince.
“Charlotte,” Mrs. Pettifer repeated in a wistful maternal tone, which is far worse than sharpness, for it can be ignored only at the cost of crippling guilt. “Your aunt is visiting. Come and say hello.”
A woman stepped into the doorway, bright-faced and breathing a little too fast for good manners. “My word!” Miss Plim ejaculated with astonishment. “You look as if you’ve emerged from a hurricane.”
Charlotte touched the one loose strand of hair fallen from beneath her hat. The hat itself was tilted; a few creases marred her skirt. “I took an unfamiliar route home,” she explained, “and found myself rushing. Hello, Aunt Judith. Good afternoon, Mama.”
“Won’t you join us for tea?” Mrs. Pettifer asked.
Charlotte hesitated, and the ladies watched her blink as she tried to contrive a good excuse. But failing to do so, she came to sit at the table with that particularly exquisite graciousness, which screams reluctance. “What have you been up to?” her mother asked, passing her a teacup.
“Up to?” The cup shook in Charlotte’s hand. She set it down firmly and smiled. “Nothing. That is to say, plodding along as normal, feet on the ground, quite boring, really.”
“Did you go to St. James’s as you planned?” Miss Plim inquired.
“Briefly,” Charlotte said—and then unaccountably flushed. “I mean, only for a moment. Just in and out. Saw no one special, talked to no one, please pass the milk.”
Mrs. Pettifer eyed her daughter with concern as she incantated the small silver jug across the table. “Are you quite the thing, dear?”
Charlotte smiled again. “Yes. Of course. How was your own morning?”
