‘Will it still work if it’s been, what, a decade and a half?’ Gwen whispered. ‘You’d never use spices that old in a recipe.’
‘How should I know?’ Isobelle murmured. ‘We’d better hope magic isn’t like cooking, or else I’m going to have doomed us both before we start.’
Agrimony, Tabitha had said. Agrimony, for sending a curse back to its maker. She’d used rosemary, instead, for truth and clarity. But they didn’t need that now – they knew it was Bingleton they were after.
What they needed was to turn his magic back on him. Only for a moment – just long enough to save their friend.
Gwen crossed over to the row of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, craning her neck to examine each in turn by the moonlight coming in through the window.
Isobelle, who did not deceive herself about her usefulness when it came to the identification of plants, followed the path she’d taken last time they were here, back to the dusty workbench with its piles of books.
There wasOn Necromanciewhere she had left it, still lying open with the ribbon marking the pages that had shown her Bingleton was a necromancer. Isobelle shook her head, trying to pull her thoughts into some sort of order. What had been the point of placing the book here? What had Bingleton hoped to achieve?
She idly turned a page, as though the answers she needed might be found in the very book that had posed such a mystery.
To her considerable surprise, however, the next page of the book did not hold secret and helpful information on necromancy. Rather, it contained an extremely involved recipe for onion tart. There appeared to be quite a lot of decorative pastry involved.
‘What on earth …?’
Isobelle turned another page, and another. Recipes, and plenty of them. In fact, the whole book was recipes, apart from the two pages she’d turned to – the ones marked by the ribbon.
Now she looked more closely, the parchment of those pages was a little lighter.
In fact, now she looked more closely, the title on the front of the book was suspiciously shiny, for a tomethat had sat abandoned for almost as long as she’d been alive.
Someone hadcreatedthis book, like a prop in a stage drama. But for what purpose?
‘Here it is,’ said Gwen, behind her. ‘Pass me that handkerchief? We’d better keep moving – Olivia’s probably on our trail by now. I imagine she’s an excellent horse thief, as well as a spy.’
Isobelle left the book and hurried over, pulling out her handkerchief and holding it open beneath the fragile stems hanging from the ceiling. Gwen carefully crumbled some of the leaves into it, and Isobelle wrapped it up, then tucked it down her bodice.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Onward, for fear of Olivia behind us.’
The clearing was much as they’d left it – though it was cold, the ground powdered with a soft dusting of snow, the trees offered a degree of shelter from the wind. The remains of the ritual they’d attempted with Tabitha still lay scattered about the place – the candles, the stones, the oil jar and the abalone bowl, the fading light glinting off its iridescent interior.
Isobelle set them out on the fallen oak tree as they had been arranged last time, and found the jar where it had rolled away. She pulled out the rosemary Tabitha hadpushed inside. Unwrapping her handkerchief, she shook the crumbling pieces of the almost-certainly-agrimony out of it, and into the jar. Then she retrieved the folded paper.
A small part of her was delighted to have the chance to unfold Tabitha’s incantation, and see what magical words had been written there. But when she opened it up, the scribble was not so much mystic as it was mystifying.
‘Is her handwriting that bad?’ Gwen asked, as Isobelle turned the scrap of parchment upside down, to see if it made more sense that way. The lines looped and crisscrossed and refused to coalesce into any actual letters she could recognise.
‘No, it’s not … perhaps it’s another language?’ Isobelle’s voice rose in uncertain query. ‘Or another alphabet?’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Gwen replied, raising her hands. ‘French is as far as I go.’
‘Never mind,’ Isobelle said firmly, retrieving her writing kit from Princess Buttercup’s saddle, and sidestepping the mare’s attempt to bite her quill. Brow furrowed in concentration, she crossed out Tabitha’s message, and on the other side she wrote:
I am rubber, and thou art glue;
Thy curses bounce off me, and stick right back to you.
Gwen, reading over her shoulder, gave a soft sound.
Isobelle cast her a sharp look over her shoulder. ‘What? Would you rather have a go?’
Gwen held up her hands in a gesture of surrender, wiping her grin off her face and assuming a look of intense innocence as she retreated to lean against a tree. The ride here had clearly winded her, though Achilles had carried her with his usual care – Isobelle hoped she was up to what was coming next.
Whateverwascoming next.
