Cecilia shrugged her mouth in agreement while she holstered thegun. From inside the cloth sling draped over her shoulder, baby Evangeline gave Daniel a drippy grin as she chewed on a small wooden sword.
“Will you join us for breakfast?” Ned asked, brushing back his hair with the kind of nonchalance that suggests one more wrong move and Daniel would never move again. “I’d love to hear all the gossip, such as why you no longer work for Alex, why you are wearing a piratic earring, and why you appear to be some kind of government spy infiltrating the society of my friends and family.”
The charming smile gleamed, and Daniel warned himself to be very careful indeed. He was reluctant to die just as he’d secured Alice Dearlove’s affections.
“Breakfast sounds good,” he said. “However, I must rendezvous with Miss Dearlove in our—”
He turned to point, and his arm froze halfway through the gesture.
“—cottage,” he finished blankly as said domicile jerked and shuddered away from the ground.
“Oh dear,” Cecilia murmured. “It seems Miss Dearlove is departing without you.”
“She would never do that.”
“Loves you too much?” Ned said.
“It would break Regulation 11,” Daniel answered. “There must be trouble.”
He was about to begin a futile ground pursuit when suddenly Ned caught his arm, twisted it up around his back, and set a dagger to his throat.
“Sorry,” the pirate said with a blithe lack of sincerity. “No offense. I just need you to listen to what I have to say, and I suspect this is the only way you’ll do that without trying to kill me again.”
Daniel considered protesting but had to admit it was true. Even now, watching the cottage lurch higher, a homicidal terror seared throughhis nerves. Alice moving through the skies haunted him, phantom-wise. One stiff breeze and that building was going to fall apart. And if he lost Alice,hewould fall apart.
“You can’t catch her by running,” Ned said, his tone so aggravatingly calm it was just as well he had Daniel restrained. “We’ll take you in our house.”
Daniel’s pulse bashed hard against the dagger blade. “You’d do that?”
Cecilia smiled at him. “Just imagine what Charlotte would say if we failed to help you.”
All three of them shuddered.
“But we must hurry,” Cecilia continued, “before the other guests see us.”
Ned released Daniel and they set off at a run across the grass to where the rose-swathed brick cottage known as Puck House awaited, smoke drifting from its chimney. Evangeline chortled piratically with every step, and Cecilia told her, “We’re going on a lovely escapade, yes that’s right, coochy—uh, I meantally ho!It’s going to be such fun!”
Daniel frowned. Watching the A.U.N.T. cottage swoop and jolt on an ungainly course eastward did not feel like fun to him. It felt like the Great Library of Alexandria was aflame in his stomach.
The red front door of Puck House opened before they reached it, and a young woman dressed in black, with dark ringlets tumbling from her mobcap, saluted jauntily.
“I didn’t expect you back so soon,” she said as they rushed into the small, warmly lit entrance chamber. “Please excuse the mess of ectoplasm and pitiful moaning. I’m still in the middle of exorcising today’s ghosts.”
“It’s fine, Pleasance dear,” Cecilia answered, even as Ned closed the door behind them and began dashing in and out of rooms, shuttingwindows. “Would you please take Evangeline for a little while? We are just going to help Mr. Bixby here with a spot of hot pursuit.”
“Of course, miss,” Pleasance said, reaching for the baby. “Shall I bring a tea tray up to the cockpit?”
“That would be excellent. Come with me, Mr. Bixby.”
She began speaking the flight incantation as she led the way up a series of carpeted stairs. Books were stacked at the side of each tread, and on shelves in the landing above, and lining the walls of a bedroom Daniel glimpsed as they took a short corridor to a staircase rising into the cockpit: a cozy attic furnished with plump sofas, cushions, and baskets of toys. Lush golden lamplight illuminated an array of bucolic artwork; furniture polish scented the air. The large oak wheel overlooked a gable window, and next to it stood a child’s high chair with a play set of sextant, telescope, and lockpick cluttering the tray.
Having spent years in the shambles of Alex O’Riley’s battlehouse—and then months in the pristine environment it had become after Charlotte moved in, bringing with her a squad of cleaners and decorators—Daniel felt strangely wobbly at the experience of this homey battlehouse with all its books and family comforts. So wobbly, indeed, that he actually used a word likewobblyto describe his feeling.
Cecilia strode to the wheel, still incantating. As she set her hands upon it, the house glided up with an ease that spoke of her skill. “Pardon me, but are you certain Miss Dearlove did not just leave?” she asked as she held the cottage to a smooth, rapid incline. “After all, no pirate would have stolen your house. We might shoot it down, but it would go against our code of ethics tostealit.”
“I know that,” he assured her. “But I also know Miss Dearlove would not depart without me. For one thing, she cannot manage the flight incantation. I suspect we’ve been double-crossed, perhaps by someone with a grudge...” He paused as his thoughts began lining upneatly toward a conclusion... “Someone with a ladder, who knows how to use the incantation to make a ceiling collapse, and who happens to have disappeared.Snodgrass.”
“Well, have no fear, Mr. Bixby. We shall catch them.”
