Chapter 9
Anne and Mama receive the news in different ways.
Anne’s voice is too shrill, too excited.
She’s forcing herself to be overly enthusiastic, trying to make up for Mama’s reaction, which is muted, even cautious.
Both their responses irritate me a bit, but I understand the reasoning behind them.
Mama was betrayed over and over by the man she once loved, and she can’t help fearing Beresford because he’s relatively unknown to us.
“Do you love him?” she asks.
“Yes, as far as I know him,” I tell her. “But you’ve always told us that love isn’t enough of a reason for marriage, not on its own. I’ve got other reasons, practical ones. Like the fact that a marriage with him will keep us from suffering and starving this winter.”
“So you’re doing this for mercenary reasons.”
“And for love,” I counter. “Both things can be true. He understands that we need things from him—he offered his help before I could even ask for it. But he wants to honor me by making his fortune mine, so I won’t feel like I’m accepting charity in exchange for sex.”
“Is that what he said?” Mama crooks an eyebrow.
“More or less.”
She’s still frowning, so I say, “You have two weeks to get used to the idea. For now, we need to get dressed. The carriage is coming at nine to take us to Gresoul. We’re all getting new clothes.”
Anne lets out a pleased squeal and charges upstairs. Then she comes halfway down again to call, “Can we get new underwear?”
“He said we could each pick out an entire new wardrobe, so yes.”
“How lovely! My panties have been mended so many times they’ve become quite uncomfortable. Seams in odd places, if you know what I mean.”
She runs back upstairs, and I exchange a smile with Mama.
“I truly am happy for you,” she says, taking my hand. “Just be careful, my darling girl.”
“I will. And if he isn’t worthy of me, I’ll leave him.”
Her face falls a little. “Try to figure out his worth before you have children. Once you start a family, everything becomes more complicated.”
“You still could have left,” I say, more sharply than I mean to. It feels as if she’s blaming me again, telling me I’m the reason she stayed.
“I know,” she replies. “We always have choices. But it’s a plain fact that children are a factor one must consider in such decisions. I wish you would wait until you know him better.”
“Mother mine.” I take both her hands. “I am twenty-two, a grown woman, raised with all your proverbs and precepts. I possess some wisdom of my own. Trust me like I trust Beresford. Promise me that you’ll forget your worries, just for today, and have fun with us.
You’ll get to buy a fine gown for the next dinner party.
Wait until Justice Oellin sees you in it. ”
Her face softens with a girlish smile. “A gown that will make his jaw drop, eh? Now that does sound like fun.”
The following fortnight is such a whirl of shopping, planning, and preparing that I barely get to see Beresford at all.
He’s inviting everyone in the entire region and hosting a lavish reception at the pavilion near the temple of Junaeth.
Thanks to his growing reputation as an excellent host and the abrupt announcement of our marriage plans, the entire area is buzzing with gossip.
I don’t hear any of it directly, but Anne repeats some of it to me when I insist that I want to know what people are saying.
“Some of them are still convinced you’re evil,” she admits. “They think you killed Herron and Grandmother Riquet, and a few other people who have disappeared over the past several months. They say you’ve bewitched Beresford.”
“How clever of me.”
“But there are a lot of people on your side, too,” Anne hastens to add.
“They like you and Beresford together, and they’re excited about having the chance to attend a lavish wedding.
There’s a great deal being said about your beauty and his looks, as well as the hope that your marriage will bring business to the area and revitalize some of the villages. ”
Those hopes might be justified, because Beresford seems to have endless resources to devote to the occasion.
Our wedding is going to be the party of the year, if he has his way.
But as we move through the stages of planning, I realize that the suddenness of the event poses a challenge to local suppliers, who must procure decorations, flowers, and food that are to Beresford’s liking, all within a short span of time.
I join my fiancé for most of the meetings with the suppliers, and he yields to my preference in most things.
When we don’t agree, we debate the matter and take turns conceding to each other.
Whenever a supplier claims they can’t obtain something in time, Beresford offers them more money.
Usually that works, though in a few cases we have to alter our plans to fit with what’s readily available in the area.
There’s no time to import any exotic luxuries from other regions or kingdoms.
Beresford and I don’t always travel to the meetings together, and sometimes he has other business to do. I’m not sure where he got his money or what business he still pursues, and whenever I ask he chuckles and says, “Please, let’s not talk about it. It’s too unbearably dull to discuss.”
His reluctance is a warning sign posted along the path to the wedding.
I see it clearly, and I choose to ignore it, because I want to marry him.
I want to fuck him, eat dinners with him, sleep beside him, play games by the fire in the evening, and take strolls in the gardens of his estate.
I want to roam the hallways of his mansion with him and christen every room with our love.
I have to imagine the rooms, because I still haven’t seen them.
Beresford says there’s work going on in the house, that he’s redecorating some of the rooms to prepare them for my arrival as the new mistress of the estate.
He says I mustn’t enter the mansion until after the wedding, when the work is complete.
When another warning sign pops up in my mind, I avert my eyes.
On the night before my wedding, I summon three demons.
One arrives torn and screaming, a bat-winged creature the size of a dog, with eight eyes and the feathered tail of a bird of paradise. When it refuses to let me touch it or bandage it, I open a window, and it flies out into the night.
An hour later, while I’m sitting in bed with a cup of tea, trying to calm myself down, something furry slithers against my legs.
I jump up and rip back the sheets, revealing a weaselly demon with tiny tusks and a thick pelt studded with tiny mushrooms. Alerted by my shriek, Mama and Anne trap the creature in a wooden box and transport it carefully outside.
Shaken and distressed, I agree to drink some of the rum Beresford gifted my mother recently. The glass bottle is beautifully crafted in the shape of a large rose, and the stopper is engraved with a pair of leaves.
Mama pours me three fingers of the liquor. “You need your sleep.”
I swallow the drink quickly, eager for it to take effect. But I can’t make myself go back to my room alone and put my legs under those covers again, not after the appearance of the weasel, so Anne lets me share her bed. Her presence settles me, and the alcohol turns me warm, drowsy, and talkative.
“What’s happening to me?” I ask my sister. “Why so many demons at once? Why now?”
“Your emotions are heightened,” she says. “You’re getting married tomorrow.”
“The idea of the summonings being tied to my emotions has never made sense to me, though,” I counter.
“Sometimes I experience strong emotions that don’t result in a summoning.
That’s what frustrates me, and what frustrated Grandmother Riquet, too, I think.
We could never really identify what triggers them.
There’s no particular word or phrases, no specific emotion or situation. It’s unpredictable.”
“Maybe it’s never been you that’s causing it,” Anne suggests. “Maybe it’s them.”
“The creatures?” I frown.
“Yes. What if you’re like a door, and they’re the ones opening it and walking through.”
“They always seem so startled and confused, though.”
“They might not understand what they’re doing when they connect with you and pass into this world. Or maybe they do understand, but our dimension of existence is a shock to them anyway.”
“Why would they want to come here?”
Anne sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe to escape something terrible that’s happening in the other place?”
We both fall silent, staring at the dark ceiling beams and the pale plaster between them.
“What if this happens when I’m married, Anne?” I whisper.
“You didn’t tell Beresford about it?” When I don’t reply, she mutters, “Shit, Sybil.”
“I know, I know.” I flip over and plunge my face into the pillow.
“Sybil.”
“I’m a terrible person. I’ll be a terrible wife.”
“Sybil!” Anne grips my shoulder, her fingers hard with panicked tension.
I lift my head, then turn to look in the direction she’s staring.
Beside the bureau across the room stands a figure. It’s the height of a man, and yet nothing about its outline is human. Two bent legs, like those of a mantis, arch upward from its shoulders. The rest of its body is indistinct, shrouded in darkness.
“Did you summon that?” whispers Anne.
“I don’t know.”
This figure looks and behaves differently than any of the other creatures. The closest thing it resembles is the stalky shadow-thing that I summoned during the winter, the one that might have grown into the towering, two-faced wolf.
“Light,” I whisper to Anne. “We need light.”
She fumbles with the matches on her bedside table, and the wick of a candle flares bright, illuminating the figure.