Below, Gretchen sent her wolfhound-familiar tearing through the neighboring gardens. She kept him well away from the Keeper she knew was hiding behind the stable on the left, so he wouldn’t become too suspicious. Her wolfhound leaped over fences, chased a carriage, and finally trotted happily away into the shadows. He was a very faint glow of light through the fog.
After a few moments, he whined.
Gretchen waited patiently behind a tree, reminding herself that the piteous noise was false. It still had her throat clogging with tears. The wolfhound whined again and again. The mournful sound splintered the fog.
The Keeper emerged from his position, frowning. He crept closer and closer to the whining dog, until he stood at the edge of a small root cellar. The wolfhound poked his glowing head out of the opening.
Gretchen slipped behind the Keeper and shoved him hard. He fell into the cellar, landing with a resounding crash. She shut the doors over him, pulling the lock tight. Her wolfhound bounded away, tongue lolling happily.
Across the street, Penelope ran straight to the Keeper pretending to admire one of the new gas lamps. She’d watched him walk the same round twice already. She let the tears flow, pretending she was Juliet weeping over the loss of Romeo.
“Oh thank Heaven, you’re here!” she exclaimed. “I’ve seen the most horrid—” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she wilted slowly. The Keeper had no choice but to dart forward and catch her before she hit the pavement. She felt his arms go around her as he struggled to support her boneless weight. She waited until he’d carried her into the quiet lane adjacent to the road, intending perhaps to lay her down on a patch of grass to recover.
“Thank you,” she said, right before she punched him directly in the throat. He gagged in pain and shock, dropping her. Her feet hit the ground and she straightened, elbowing him hard in the groin. He groaned, collapsing.
Carriages rumbled by, obscured by mists. She heard voices of passing pedestrians.
She hit him again. His lip split, and blood dripped onto his cravat. “Are you crazy?” he croaked.
Rendering a man unconscious was harder than it looked.
He was in too much pain to immediately retaliate but she knew he’d recover before long. She didn’t know what to do. Spiders crawled over the grass. They scurried down trees and out from under beds of tulips and daffodils. She caught a glimpse of a particularly large one, nearly as big as a mouse. She suppressed a shudder as she nudged him toward the Keeper, who was on his knees now. He’d be back on his feet in moments and summoning the Order. If they arrived too early, they’d ruin everything. The Keeper reached for a pouch of summoning powder.
The spider crawled up his knee. She knew the exact moment it reached his hand.
“He’s poisonous, you know,” Penelope said lightly, even though she was fairly certain there were no poisonous spiders in England. Still, it was big and hairy. “I had him brought over from India,” she added. “But if you stay very still and quiet, I won’t let him bite you.”
He froze.
The spider meandered up his shirt.
“I really am sorry,” Penelope said, before tying his hands tightly with the rope Cormac had given her. She used the fichu in the neckline of her gown to gag him. “You’ll thank me later. Tonight is not a night for the faint of heart.”
Chapter 55
The Greymalkin House loomed as desolate and sinister as it had the first time Emma had seen it.
She knew dark magic pulsed in its center and the wards and shields of the Order kept it invisible to ordinary eyes. People’s gazes slid away from it, or saw only a patch of wild grass across from a deserted corner of the park. Unfortunately, she saw it all too clearly. The gates stood as strong and tall as they ever were and she had to crane her neck back to see where they met at the top. The black paint over the iron was peeling, the magpie sigil of the Greymalkin family silhouetted in the curlicues. There was no padlock, thick chains, or poisoned darts, but still the gates could not be breached.
Emma’s heart thundered in her chest so hard her ribs nearly rattled. Adrenaline pumped through her, making her feel oddly disconnected to her own body. She took the knife out of the satchel strapped crosswise over her chest.
A little bit of her blood and this would all be over.
She jabbed the tip of the blade into her witch knot, dragging it across her palm until blood welled to the surface.
She took a deep breath and—“Emma?”—jumped a foot in the air, yelping.
She spun on her heel, dagger in hand. Sophie froze, palms out to show she was unarmed. Her white gloves glowed faintly in the moonlight. Emma lowered her weapon slowly. “Sophie?” she hissed, the back of her neck prickling painfully. “I could have killed you!”
A trio of gentlemen walked past them, barely glancing their way. Only one of them shuddered. “This corner gives me the shivers,” he muttered. The fog swallowed him whole, rain dripping off the brim of his hat.
Emma just stared at her. ‘This isn’t a good time for a chat, Sophie.”
“I know.” She shivered delicately. “Those poor girls. And Lilybeth.”
“Go back to the academy. Now,” Emma said, impatient to get it over and done with, before her courage faltered.
Sophie followed her gaze. “You can’t seriously be thinking of going inside!”
Emma ignored her. She had to get the gates open before the Order arrived to stop her, but with just enough time for them to get in and stop the Sisters. She couldn’t afford to waste another second.
Gritting her teeth, she slapped the bleeding cut onto the magpie sigil, right in the center where the gate split the bird in two.
She waited, breath held. Sophie gasped beside her. The rain sliced through the mist.
The gates didn’t open.
Emma blinked, sure that she was seeing wrong. The gates had to open. How else were they to get in and trap the Sisters? Her blood had unlocked all the other spells. It had to work. It had to.
“Emma,” Cormac said from the wet shadows. “Keepers are on their way.”
The mist hung veils between them. Her blood burned. She let her hand drop, disappointed.
“Let me heal your cut,” Sophie said quietly, taking her by the hand.
The blood on the gate began to sizzle.
It smoked and burned but still the gates did not open.
They didn’t have to.
Emma was sucked into darkness, dragging Sophie behind her.
Chapter 56
The inside of the Greymalkin House smelled like lemon balm, fennel seeds, and decades of accumulated dust. Light filtered through the cracks in the wooden shutters and the stained glass window in the turret above the front door. The chunk of jet Cormac had given her exploded before she was even fully aware of her surroundings.
The gates had opened after all.
She’d been sent through a portal linking them to the inside of the house. Emma grabbed the wall for support, blinking back flashes of violet light and waves of dizziness. She searched for Sophie, expecting to see her cowering somewhere, confused. She’d only meant to heal a little cut, after all, not travel through a portal into the darkest house in all of London, and possibly Britain.
Sophie didn’t look the least bit concerned, actually.
She stood in the very center of the entrance hall, turning around slowly with a strange thrilled smile on her face. Emma’s stomach dropped, recognizing danger before her brain fully caught on. Lightning flashed outside, searing glimpses of the room into stark relief. Rain dripped through the cracks in the ornate ceiling moldings.
“Finally,” Sophie whispered. “I’m home. Do you hear that, Sisters?”
Emma backed up a step. That hadn’t sounded like a taunt of revenge on Lilybeth’s behalf.
It sounded like an invitation.
The front door, of course, was locked. Emma kept her back pressed to it, not taking her eyes off Sophie. “I don’t understand,” she said. “It was you?”
/> She nodded gently. “Of course, dear cousin.”
Emma went cold. “Cousin?”
“Several times removed, but yes, essentially. Regrettably my own Greymalkin blood is too diluted. It’s only enough to feed the Sisters, but not to open the garden gate myself to get inside.”
“You killed Lilybeth. You killed all those girls!”
Sophie nodded sadly. “I had to. The Sisters needed me.”
“Lilybeth was your friend,” Emma said, mind whirling and belly nauseous. “And poor Strawberry.”
“Who?” Sophie asked.
“The girl on the roof.”
“Oh, the Madcap. Yes, I couldn’t seem to get anyone alone at that ball next door. And then I saw her running along the roof. It was perfect. I told her I wanted to give her coins for her supper.”
Emma’s hands fisted of their own accord. Thunder was a long, deep growl, the sky turning beastly. “And Margaret York, the seamstress in the park.”
“You’re missing the point,” Sophie said.
“I don’t think I am, actually.”
“How else are we to claim our birthright? And once the Sisters knew who you were, you went and got yourself accused and run to ground.”
“I’m not all that keen to reclaim a birthright of murder,” Emma pointed out. “Even my mad mother isn’t that crazy.”
“I’m not mad,” Sophie snapped. “I’m inspired.”
“You’re cracked. Why in the world would you do this?”
“To have a family again,” she replied savagely. “You don’t know what it’s like to be alone.”
“Actually,” Emma said, thinking of the big empty house and the man she’d thought was her father all these years. “I do. And it’s no excuse.”
“You had your cousins,” she said, jealousy scraping through her voice. “I had no one.”
“You had all the Rowanstone girls!”
“It’s not the same.”
“Family is more than blood,” Emma said, trying the door handle again. She had more than enough information. None of which would do her any good if she couldn’t get out of here. “The Order is on its way.”
“They won’t get here before the Sisters,” Sophie said. Emma’s blood was still smeared on her hand. She wiped it over her heart and then traced a symbol at her feet. The chandelier rattled. Virulent violet sparks gathered in the air. “Sisters!”
“What are you doing?”
“Opening a gate, of course.”
“But the gate’s already here,” Emma stammered. “It must be. Everyone says so.”
“Everyone assumes,” Sophie corrected her primly. “But don’t you think if the Sisters could reclaim our ancestral house, they’d be here already? I had to leave that trail of marked birds for you to follow,” she confessed, as though it were all a cheerful game. “I knew if I could get you there you’d do the rest yourself.”
There was no gate.
She was risking everyone’s lives for nothing.
It was a trick.
Wind pushed at the windows and howled through the slats. Lightning struck the locked shutters, exploding them into sparks and splinters. It flashed again, hurling a spear of light at Sophie.
The house swallowed the lightning before it could touch her. It sucked it into the violet sparks, bloating them into embers and strange licks of lavender flames. Emma remembered that purple fire, remembered the open gate releasing hellhounds and Greymalkin warlocks.
Sophie had tricked her to get her blood to open the gate. In the Greymalkin House, the Sisters could force it open indefinitely.
Emma reached for the storm again.
Thunder shook the dust off the rafters. A crystal drop came off the chandelier, shattering on the ground. Snow blew through the broken window.
“You can’t hurt me, not in here. The Sisters told me which charms to make to use the house as a shield.” She took a step toward Emma. “You’ve been as lonely as I have. I know it. Don’t you want to be part of a real family?”
The rain stopped. The thunder retreated and even the mist blew apart, leaving the street clearer than any London street had ever been in recent memory. Too late.
The Sisters had found them.
Chapter 57
“Where the hell did she go?” Cormac demanded as Gretchen and Penelope closed in behind him. They stared at the dismal house.
“What just happened?” Penelope asked, stricken.
“Emma was right,” Cormac replied grimly as she went through his arsenal of amulets. “Her blood was the key. Only it wasn’t this gate she opened, but a hidden portal.”
Emma’s shout echoed clearly from the Greymalkin House. A storm gathered above their heads, raging with light and fire. Cormac launched himself at the gates.
The magical wards pulsed an angry acid green, flinging him off the way a dog flings water off its fur. He flew off his feet, landing hard on the edge of the pavement and tumbling into the road. He leaped into a crouch, barely avoiding a passing carriage. The horses nickered at him reproachfully. He pushed to his feet without a backward glance, even when they passed so close one of them took a swipe at his shoulder. His sleeve was torn and there was a bloody scratch on his cheek.
He didn’t notice any of it.
He saw nothing but the gate and the house standing between him and Emma.
Gretchen and Penelope parted, scurrying out of his way. Pale glowing spiders crawled out from under Penelope’s hem, clustering at the base of the gates. They flared that same virulent green and she winced, sweat beading on her brow. Real spiders began to congregate, coming out of the bushes, the nearby mews and walking in a line across the street from the shadowy edge of the park.
Cormac used his iron dagger to try to pry the gates open. He gritted his teeth against the pain shooting up his arm. The blade slipped, coming away red.
“Emma’s blood,” Gretchen said as it hissed and boiled. It had already eroded the metal, pockmarking the edge of the iron magpie’s wings.
“That’s my girl,” he said softly.
“Let me try,” Moira called down. She pointed to the immense gargoyle on the Greymalkin roof. She couldn’t quite reach it, but the wards wouldn’t have let her touch it anyway. “Where do you want him? Right on the gates?”
“Combined with Emma’s blood, it might be enough to break them open,” Cormac agreed.
Moira leaned over, trying to whisper in the gargoyle’s ear. “I can’t reach him. I need to lure him closer with another gargoyle.” She looked around wildly, running over the roof until she found one attached to a rainspout.
“You’d better hurry,” Gretchen encouraged from the mouth of the laneway. “Because cloaking glamour or not, we’re starting to look suspicious.”
Moira whispered in the gargoyle’s ear. His wings were narrow and fluted. When they moved, they hardly made a sound at all. The rainspout creaked and then he was airborne. “Come on, little pip,” she crooned, darting back to the other side. She took a small bundle of bat wings from her belt and poured whiskey over it from a flask in her pocket. The little gargoyle dipped down in front of her. She nodded to the Greymalkin House. “Go on.”
The gargoyle flew too close to the wards and showered green sparks on the others waiting on the ground. The second time he circled around, the massive Greymalkin gargoyle growled. His eyes opened slowly, reptilian in their cold indifference.
Finally, after what felt like an excruciatingly slow eternity during which Cormac imagined hundreds of horrible deeds that could have made Emma scream, the Greymalkin gargoyle shifted.
His talons unclenched, dislodging dirt and debris. His stone wings turned a leathery gray and he pushed off the ornate parapet, snagged the wrought iron widow’s walk below, snapping off the points. He flew slowly, erratically, and against all laws of physics. The Greymalkin magic anchored him to the protection of the house, but the pull of Madcap spells eroded the magical chains.
But only a little.
The gargoyle s
wung toward Moira, snarling. She swung out, dangerously close to falling, and tossed the whiskey-soaked bat wings and bird bones into his gaping mouth. He bit down reflexively, crunching through magic and marrow.
“To the gate!” she commanded.
The gargoyle descended with its own kind of grace, claws clutching the top of the gates and bending them. The sound of crushed metal made the hairs on the back of Cormac’s neck stand straight up.
“Ha!” Moira shouted smugly. “Bloody Keepers couldn’t do that!”
“That’s because they didn’t have Emma on their side,” Cormac said with a grim smile, as her blood ate through the spells locking the gates together.
“Or a Madcap.” She smirked.
“Or a Madcap,” he agreed.
The gargoyle continued to tear at the gate, green fire searing his stony talons. At the very first crack, a large black spider slipped through. The gate peeled apart slowly, like the rind of an orange. Spiders scurried up the path.
Cormac used his dagger again, slipping it between the doors. Gretchen broke a branch off a nearby tree and joined him, using her entire body as leverage. The iron creaked and groaned. The gargoyle descended, forcing them to cover their heads.
Emma screamed again.
Cormac and Gretchen exchanged grim glances and doubled their efforts, pushing until the veins pulsed in their temples and their knuckles popped uncomfortably. The gap widened, just enough to let Marmalade slip through, leading a parade of glowing spiders. Wider and wider it opened, like the jaw of a beast with acid-green teeth. The gargoyle roared again and flew back to its perch.
The first spider scurried back toward them. Its glowing counterpart drifted free and raced up Penelope’s ankle. She paled, eyes snapping open when she saw whatever the spider had seen.
“Hurry.”
Chapter 58
There was nowhere to run.
Emma tried the door again but it held fast.
The Sisters drifted out of the portal hovering in midair, just under the chandelier. The purple light was as malignant as she remembered it. The stink of sulfur mingled with lemon balm. Ice clung to the banisters, creeping like ivy.