Chapter 7
Seven
“We’re here,” Jack whispered as he crouched beside Emmy, his eyes fixed on the dark field.
Emmy followed his gaze. After a four-mile trek through the woods, her feet ached, and she was embarrassingly winded, but they’d
finally arrived at the headquarters of the Society of the Charmed. Allegedly.
She exchanged a glance with Jimmy, who looked equally confused. “Where is it?”
“It’s hidden behind an illusion enchantment,” Caleb murmured, “but it’s there.”
Illusory magic? Emmy studied the darkness with renewed interest.
“The Villadom family has the gift of illusions,” Jack explained quietly. “A Villadom used to have to fortify it every few
days, but the guards commissioned Grace to imbue stones around the perimeter with the illusion, giving the Villadoms a much-needed
break.”
“How useful,” Emmy muttered. The Society was making the most of their darling protégé.
Jack kept his gaze trained on the dark field. “We enter through the basement, add our names to the books, then get the hell
out.”
“And if they see us?” Headquarters was always guarded, Jack had said, though only two guards were stationed here in the offseason,
on a rotating basis.
Jack lifted a taunting brow. “You could transform our faces so they won’t recognize us.”
“I’m not ready yet.” Emmy had to be careful. Unlike fingernails, faces were close to a crucial organ. One wrong move, and she might accidentally transform their brains to mush.
Jack, of course, disagreed.
“Are we sure this is a good idea?” Caleb asked in a hushed voice. “You two were exhausted just from walking. Perhaps I should
do it. Or even Jimmy.”
“It can’t be a forgery,” Jack insisted. “Only Vallillo can transform the handwriting and the ink to match precisely. It has
to be her.”
All day, she’d practiced with Jack. It was a simple transformation, one she could probably manage without the relic now that
her magic was unbound. The quickest way was to scribble the words in her own hand, then transform them to match the original
handwriting.
Jack passed her a crumpled sheet of paper. “Here are our new identities.”
“‘Nathaniel and Winifred Fontaine,’” she read, “siblings, and second cousins once removed to Jack and Rose Fontaine. You will
still have the Fontaine flames, but I’ll have inherited my mother’s . . .” She glanced up from the paper. “Earth conjury?”
He shrugged. “You can transform plants to bigger plants.”
Emmy swallowed her disappointment. Plant magic was better suited for gardeners.
“Oh, c’mon.” Jimmy could hardly contain his mirth. “Plants are . . . exciting.”
“We draw less attention with elemental conjury.” The long walk had brought a rosy tint to Jack’s cheeks, though he, too, seemed
winded. “Besides, Mrs. Windsor herself has earth conjury. Exotic gardening is all the rage.”
Peering over Emmy’s shoulder, Caleb frowned. “You’re adding me to the list of Society-approved servants?”
“The steward of Mistfield Manor.” Jack clapped Caleb on the back. “A promotion.”
“You think I broke you out of prison and helped you track down a girl who can transform us into whomever we please, all for a promotion?”
Jack blinked. “Steward is the highest-ranked position, yes?”
“You absolute snob!” Snatching the paper from Emmy, Caleb licked his finger and smudged the ink. “Jack will still be Nathaniel
Fontaine but I will pose as Emmy’s brother and chaperone, visiting New York to find her a respectable charmed husband.”
“A husband?” Emmy hissed. As if this could get any worse.
Caleb rolled his eyes. “I won’t actually marry you off, but the Society must think you’re looking to wed—and that you’ll inherit millions once you do.”
“Fine.” Jack snatched back the paper and began scribbling. “You two will pose as Winifred and Paxton Fairchild, distant Fontaine
cousins whose surname should already be recorded by the Society. You’re helping me settle into Mistfield this summer. And
Jimmy is a building design prodigy from the far east, where the Society has no records. Now can we go?”
Unease swept over Emmy. Breaking into the Society’s headquarters was about as wise as a girl from Five Points posing as an
heiress. But Jack was already inching toward the tree line.
“Caleb and I will keep watch,” Jimmy whispered. “He’ll do his strange mind talking if you’re in any danger.”
“You know I can hear you,” Caleb grumbled, though he gave Emmy a curt nod.
A rare kindness. That was suspicious, given how vocal he’d been about despising Jack’s schemes. Maybe he wanted her to fail.
“Stay low,” Jack whispered as she joined him at the edge of the clearing, her heart pounding. “We can’t see them, but if they’re
paying attention, they can spot us. When we cross the illusion, you’ll feel a popping sensation. Then we’ll wait for the guard
to circle round the building.”
Her palms were clammy. Had she ever done something this reckless? She ought to have been hiding from the Society guards, but here she was, heading toward them.
Jack began dragging himself through the overgrown grass on his forearms. Emmy followed, regretting her wool dress as it caught
on the uneven ground. They made slow, grueling progress, keeping their heads down, their bodies low. So focused was Emmy on
not panting too loudly, she almost missed the moment her ears popped.
The Society’s headquarters blinked into existence hardly twenty yards away.
Emmy stared at the formidable building: three stories of pale stone, with black shutters framing the square windows. Manicured
hedges lined the long path to the black front doors, and a front porch wrapped itself around the sides of the building before
disappearing from sight.
They waited, unmoving, for a guard to make rounds. After an eternity, the front door swung open and an enormous man strode
onto the porch, his golden lantern held high.
Emmy held her breath. Not a lantern, but fire magic, though his flames were not black.
Neither Emmy nor Jack so much as blinked as the guard peered into the darkness. He was supposed to walk the perimeter of the
building, but after a minute, he went back indoors.
Thirty minutes before the next round. Jack resumed his crawling, more quickly this time, and Emmy struggled not to lose him
in the grass. Finally, they reached the basement window on the southern wall. “It’s locked,” Jack whispered.
“You said it’d be open!”
“It will be.” He grinned wickedly. “When you use your conjury to open it.”
Emmy gaped at him. “I didn’t prepare for this.”
“You quite literally transformed your fingernails into knives yesterday. You have tremendous power.” He poked at her hand that gripped the relic. “Use it.”
She nearly made daggers again, just to make him bleed. He never gave her a bit of leeway, not even for a moment.
Pressing her free hand against the cool pane, Emmy tried to picture the glass molecules. Sand? Oxygen? The brume gathered
around her, courtesy of the relic. But what should she transform? If she broke the glass, the Society would know someone had
entered. She could alter the interior lock to something easy to push past, but she couldn’t even see what it looked like.
“Must you overthink even the smallest of tasks?”
“Must you speak incessantly?” He was a terrible magic teacher, not at all patient like Papa.
But Emmy would never have another lesson with Papa, would never hear his voice again.
With her palm on the glass, Emmy envisioned the pane as thin as the newspapers that left ink on the pads of Papa’s fingers.
The brume rushed through her in a cool torrent, and the glass softened to a sheet of paper that tore silently in her hands.
She’d done it.
Reaching through the window, Jack undid the latch and slid it open. “Ladies first.”
“Absolutely not.”
With a soft thud, Jack disappeared inside the basement. After a moment, she followed.
There were no candles down here, and certainly no gas lamps, but Jack stood a few feet away, his forehead creased in concentration
as a small, shadowy flame appeared in his palm. Without the relic, his magic was arduous. Good.
“In and out,” Jack murmured. “Let’s find the records.”
They’d landed in some sort of storage room, cluttered with columns of crates and old furniture.
There were far too many bookshelves, each spilling with a random assortment of knickknacks and tomes.
Leather-bound books were strewn beside a crate of pearl napkin holders.
Plenty of others were stacked in perilously high piles, blocking the tomes behind them.
“I thought you said the Society is organized,” Emmy whispered.
“The records will be. In the next room.” He led her to a formidable-looking door. Removing a skeleton key from his pocket,
he pressed it to his lips before sliding it in the keyhole. With any luck, the locks hadn’t been changed since Jack’s father
was commander.
Mercifully, it clicked open, though it creaked in protest.
She stayed close to Jack’s flame as he crept into the records room. Here, neat shelves were labeled with thick black letters.
Elemental. Alchemical. Sensile. Charmlinking.
“Types of conjury,” Jack whispered, his dim light illuminating the old bindings.
She considered the four categories. “Which one am I?”
“Alchemical. You use the brume only to power your transformations. Once you’re done, you don’t need it to maintain the change,
because you’ve permanently altered the chemistry.”
She nearly smiled. It was one of the ways Emmy’s magic had bested Grace’s: Emmy’s transformations lasted forever, while Grace’s
bridged objects lost their strength with use. Part of her longed to ask Jack which type of conjury Grace possessed, but she
tucked away the thought, instead taking in the treasure trove of ancient texts, each one begging to be read. There were grimoires,
too—thick old books stuffed with handwritten notes from long ago. How she longed to pull them off their shelves, but touching
them risked triggering some sort of protective charm, especially if the Society had used Grace’s bridging magic inside as
well.
They needed to hurry. Emmy moved from shelf to shelf, scanning their contents, but she soon came across a locked armoire. Through the glass, trophies glittered in Jack’s dim light.
“The summer pageant trophies,” Jack murmured, raising his dying flame. “I forgot they’re stored here in the offseason. Each
year, the Society commissions a trophy to demonstrate the winner’s gift when touched. Grace’s father enchanted most of them,
but that’s her job now.”
Emmy stared at the gilded chalices. Never before had she been so tempted to smash something to pieces. But she continued walking
to the next aisle.
Unlike those on the other shelves, these books were uniform in size and color: white, with their spines painted in thick,
swirling black ink. Stretching onto her tippy-toes, Emmy trailed her finger over the alphabetized spines until she came across
F. Her pulse quickened as she lifted the Fontaine book and spread the pages, the dry leather binding cracking.
1 October 1517 Henrick Fontaine, Fyre Magick . . .
“Found it.” Line upon line named the Fontaines throughout history, along with their dates of birth, living relatives, occupations,
incomes, and other intimate details. Emmy flipped through the pages until she came to a list in the back.
Deaths of Note
Helena Fontaine (née Beauchamp), died in childbirth, 11 October 1861
Henrick Fontaine, Commander of the Guard, died of angina pectoris, 14 April 1881
Rose Ophelia Fontaine, died in fire, 28 May 1881
Jack Henrick Fontaine, died in prison, 30 April 1882
“Well, look at that,” Jack murmured. “Not only am I dead, but my death is ‘of note.’”
She searched for a glimmer of sadness in Jack’s smirk. His sister’s death was hardly a month after his father’s. He had to be hurting.
He pointed to his own name. “Rather compelling evidence they’re not looking for us.”
A silver lining, at least.
Without wasting any more time, Emmy scanned the pages until she found Jack’s great-grandfather, whose brother had lived abroad
and had fathered one child. Although the man bore no children, Emmy extended the familial line, giving him a son, a grandson,
and a great-grandson: Nathaniel. She could not close her eyes while conjuring, instead focusing on getting the ink just right.
“Your family tree is almost completely empty,” she murmured as she shifted the swirling cursive. “More than half your relatives
did not bear children.”
“That’s common. The charmed are far less fertile than ordinaries.”
Less fertile? She glanced at him. “Why?”
“Who knows?” He leaned closer to scrutinize her work, close enough to feel the heat of him through her wool dress. “According
to the Society, it’s evidence that we’re a dying breed. But maybe God just doesn’t want us to outnumber the ordinaries.”
Had her parents known that, when she was a little girl wishing for a sister? What other information about charmed folks did
the Society hoard for themselves?
“With a bona fide sibling, you’ll be even more of a catch this summer. The marriage frenzy is—” He stilled, his gaze darting
to the stairs.
Emmy? Jack?
Emmy froze. The voice—the voice had been in her head. “Caleb?”
A carriage full of guards is heading toward you.