Chapter Three #2
Lenora is home, and I’m sitting in the parlor with my friends when I’m supposed to be hiding in the locked room.
I murmur an excuse to Audrey and Henrietta as I stride from the room. I need to intercept Lenora. My aunt might be the personification of composure, but if that composure even ripples, she’ll be as annoyed as if she’d thrown a tantrum in front of humans.
Warn her. Explain. Apologize. I just need—
The hall is silent. I hurry down the stairs as fast as I can, but when I reach the bottom, the front door is still shut, no one there.
I mentally poke for the ward.
Gone.
Did Lenora undo it and then get delayed on the steps by a neighbor?
I have absolutely no doubt that I re-cast it correctly after letting my friends inside. I might be on the dregs of my spell power, but I’d been extra careful and poked it afterward, to be sure.
Staying along the wall, I ease toward the front door. Then I tug the drapery just enough to see the steps.
No one is there.
My heart rate picks up.
That isn’t possible.
Only Lenora knows the key to snap my ward from the other side. But if she undid it, she wouldn’t do more than pause to answer a neighbor’s greeting. She wouldn’t let anyone lure her off the steps.
Another witch could break the wards, but only from the inside, and no witch could sneak in when every opening was sealed.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Somehow I made a mistake. That’s the only explanation. Everything is fine. I only need to re-ward the door.
Except that snap hadn’t just been the door.
The wards are connected, like a spiderweb.
I could unlock either a single one—as I’d done to let my friends in—or the whole web.
The snap I’d felt told me the entire web had disintegrated.
All the doors and windows need resealing, and my spell power hasn’t replenished enough for that.
I take a deep breath. I can handle this. Lenora has trained me well. I made a mistake with the wards, and I can chastise myself for that later.
Begin by sealing the doors. Start with the most obvious entrances and—
No, start by getting rid of my friends. Then ward the doors and street-level windows and continue on as my energy refills.
There, I have a plan. I exhale as some of that hovering panic drains away.
I’m not ready to face an actual threat. I thought I was, but even this warding slipup makes me realize how lucky I am that the threat is only looming, not actually upon me. I am in no way ready for that.
I hurry back up the stairs, stride down the hall, throw open the parlor door, and—
The room is empty.
I look left and right, as if my friends could be concealed in a corner. They aren’t.
I frown and survey the parlor.
They must have left to find me. I was gone too long and—
My gaze catches on the chessboard. One piece lies on its side. Others aren’t where they should be, as if more pieces had fallen and someone had hastily righted them, missing that one.
My friends didn’t just leave their game to come after me. They rose quickly, as if startled. Or they were grabbed, the game board jostled.
I whirl, my gaze sweeping the room.
I didn’t make a mistake. Someone broke my wards. Someone is here. Someone came after Audrey and Henrietta, and I am not prepared for this, not even a little bit—
Stop. Breathe. Think.
How could someone grab them both so easily, leaving only a disrupted board? Audrey would scream, shout, bite if she had to.
A werewolf couldn’t get them both silently out of the room, against their will.
That requires magic.
I don’t have time for games.
You need to come with me.
What if Bishop Daniels was telling the truth? What if the threat doesn’t come from him?
I still inhale deeply, trying to catch Bishop Daniels’s scent.
There’s no trace of it.
I’m turning, looking and listening, when I stop. I just tried to smell whether Bishop Daniels was here. Can I use that sense to find Audrey and Henrietta?
If I’m right and my father is a werewolf, while I clearly don’t have his strength or his ability to transform, I might have a gift I’ve never used.
The ability to track someone by scent.
And if I find that someone? Well, then, I’ll fight. I can handle this.
I resist the impulse to run into the hall, searching for Audrey and Henrietta. Use my nose, yes, but also my head. I can’t endanger my friends.
I’ve never noticed Henrietta’s scent. I haven’t known her for long and what I do recall of her smell is lemon, from the Thomas family laundry soap.
But I know Audrey’s scent. It’s that same lemon, mixed with a subtle note that’s her personal odor.
I easily find that in the air. I head to the door and inhale, only to be reminded that I’m not a werewolf.
I barely pick up traces of Audrey’s scent.
I close my eyes and inhale. Those traces seem to come from the right, in the direction of the stairs.
I roll my steps, careful to avoid the boards that creak. I was fourteen when I came here, old enough that back home, my mother gave me the freedom to roam. I’d lost that freedom in the city, and I used to sneak out on my own. I know every board that might creak and give me away.
I stop at the first door—the library—and inhale. Audrey’s smell continues on. The next door leads to a small storage closet, and when I step past it, I lose her scent.
They’re in the storage closet?
Wouldn’t their attacker have gotten them out of the house?
Unless they just wanted them out of the way.
By putting them in a storage closet.
I step toward the door and then pause. Should I leave them in there and deal with the threat?
Tilting my head, I strain to listen, but I hear nothing. In the hall, I can smell Audrey and a second faint odor that I recognize as Henrietta.
What I don’t smell? A third person.
That gives me pause.
Does the intruder know I have a well-honed sense of smell, so they’ve avoided perfumes and pomades?
I take hold of the doorknob and quietly twist. My fingers twitch as I ready a knockback spell. I’ve used them before in front of Audrey. With a hidden flick of my fingers, anyone who comes too close to us falls back as if stumbling, and she’s never noticed anything odd about that.
What if I need to use stronger magic in front of her?
Then that’s what I’ll need to do. I’d never let my friends be hurt rather than expose myself as a witch.
“Stop,” a woman’s voice says from inside the closet.
I push open the door, letting in the hall light as I lift my fingers—
Audrey stands there, staring at me, wide-eyed and frightened, with Henrietta hiding behind her, holding tight…
No, Henrietta isn’t hiding behind her cousin. She has one hand around Audrey’s waist, while the other presses a blade to her throat.