Running down the roof of Puck House, he flung himself without hesitation into empty air. The A.U.N.T. cottage lurched away from him, and only by extending his arm to the maximum degree was he able to catch hold of the doorstep. He hung painfully in a one-handed grip as his body re-established an internal balance. Pain ripped through his body. Gravity tried to introduce him to its friend, the solid ground several hundred feet below.
Swinging wildly, he pushed a finger against the bridge of his spectacles to straighten them. Then he hauled himself up over the doorstep, into the cottage. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Alice’s unimpressed face and discovered in himself a depth of impatience he’d never experienced before. Even five minutes was going to be too long away from this woman.
The cottage shuddered, reminding him that it would be an eternity if he did not dismantle the bomb and get the building landed safely.
“Stabilis sicut vadit,”he chanted as he shut the door and strode over to the crate. The cottage immediately began to settle. Incantating a holding pattern, he lifted the crate’s lid and stood quietly with his arms crossed, contemplating the device therein.
The triggering incantation seemed straightforward enough, but this being a Snodgrass creation, Daniel knew he needed to be evenmore cautious than usual. One touch in the wrong place—or perhaps even in the right place—and he’d go up in flames faster than an erotic novel in a Puritan community.
“Hm,” he said eventually. Unbuttoning his cuffs and folding up his sleeves, he obtained a paring knife from the kitchen supplies and, leaning one hand on the edge of the crate (which had an interesting effect on the muscles of his naked forearm, not that he was aware of this), he used the knife’s pointed tip to alter the engraved incantation. He changed anito at, annto anm, then paused, trying to recollect Latin declensions. A ticking began inside the device, which was both alarming and helpful—for it suggested he’d tripped a timer, but also sounded so much like Professor Michaels tapping a fingernail against a chalkboard that anxiety instantly tossed up the word he needed. He returned to etching—
Suddenly, the cottage rattled, sending a shower of dust down over him. Daniel caught his breath, not wanting to accidentally turn theiinto ajand blow the whole place up. After a moment, it calmed, and he was able to etch one final serif. Rapping a knuckle against the metal cylinder, he heard only silence within. Satisfied, he closed the crate lid.
And the cottage plunged.
Thrown off-balance, Daniel staggered against the crate.“Subsisto!”he shouted over the thundering of his pulse.
The cottage jolted to an uncertain halt. Splashing sounded in the water closet; noxious soot billowed from the fireplace. Daniel sighed at the thought of all the cleaning that would be necessary for the place to be habitable again.
But this was no time for indulging in fun.“Descendeo lente,”he commanded with the authority invested in him by several pages of insurance contracts. To his relief, the cottage began a more gentledescent. It landed near Puck House in a field of grass, and Daniel began incantating the anchor phrase.
He managed two syllables before the entire building fell apart.
For a moment it felt as if the world had become a ball of thunder. Walls toppled; the roof clattered down; the wheel broke free from its stand and rolled out of the wreckage. At last, quiet settled, and Daniel rose from where he had crouched beside the crate, pushing aside fallen roof beams and what appeared to be an ossified opossum. He brushed dust from his hair and shoulders. Bringing forth a handkerchief from a trouser pocket, he employed it to clean his spectacles. His shoes needed an urgent polish and he’d murder someone for a jacket, but there was nothing to be done about it at this moment. Stepping over shattered bricks and plaster, he departed what was now only nominally the cottage, and went in search of Alice.
“I really must go in search of Mr. Bixby,” Alice said, frowning at her reflection in Cecilia’s looking glass. Dressed in yellow frills and blue lace, she wouldn’t have recognized herself were it not for her fingers tapping with a desire to assassinate the pirate’s housemaid.
She’d barely arrived inside Puck House when Pleasance had taken one shocked glance at her stained petticoat and torn bodice and declared a makeover necessary. Cecilia happily offered her wardrobe. Pleasance impressed as an insightful woman. And so Alice agreed, for she seemed to be in sensible hands.
Ten minutes later, she was prepared to surrender her Expert Intelligence Officer card in disgrace.
“All done!” Pleasance said cheerfully—then held yet another dress against Alice’s body and contemplated its effect. This was the seventh, or possibly the seventieth. Its combination of green and pink madeAlice’s brain ache. Its high collar was an itch waiting to happen, its waist sash derided any foolish notion of breathing, and its floral print just begged to be obsessively examined for any tiny flaw. This was, in short, not so much a dress as a torture device.
“Beautiful!” Pleasance declared. “You could be proud to wear this in your coffin! And with a few ribbons in your hair, and face powder, and perhaps we could pluck your eyebrows just the slightest bit, your husband will beall adoration!”
“You are too kind,” Alice said in a tone that suggested a whole lot less kindness would be appreciated. These people were so friendly, and so concerned with her happiness, she wondered if she’d entered an upside-down world. Her heart kept growing and shrinking, and altogether she felt not quite herself. “However, duty calls. I am sure Mr. Bixby will not care what I’m wearing.”
“Oh, he’ll justloveto see you in a pretty dress,” Pleasance enthused. “Take it from me and the Blood Countess.”
“The who?” Alice asked, perplexed.
Cecilia, sitting nearby, touched her temple discreetly. Pleasance, however, would not have recognized discretion even had someone pointed to it in a dictionary.
“A ghost what possesses me,” she explained. “She says the flowers go perfectly with your eyes.”
Alice looked at the sprigs of pink and wondered if she should feel offended.
“To be fair,” Cecilia said, “Miss Dearlove should dress for herself, not for her husband.”
“Precisely!” Pleasance agreed. “Itwill befor herself when he kisses her because the dress is so pretty.”
“Kisses me,” Alice scoffed, pretending to inspect a satin bow so as to hide her blush.
“I should hope Miss Dearlove’s husband wants to kiss her no matter what she is wearing,” Cecilia argued. “It is her soul that matters, not her attire.”
“Don’t mind the mistress,” Pleasance whispered loudly to Alice. “She’s one of them feminininists. While I agree that women suffer and weshouldrage about it—”
“Suffrage,” Cecilia corrected her gently.
