Chapter Twenty-Two #2
At the far end of the Quad stood the Hall, a magnificent building of pale silver-and-gold-hued stone, with tall arched windows and a gabled roof that sported a single ornate steeple at its center.
Although it had been built just fourteen years earlier, Amelia usually felt like she was entering a grand old church as she climbed its wide granite stairs, passing beneath the archway halfway up, inhaling the dusty shadows.
But this morning her only sense was aggravation at having to run up those stairs in a long skirt.
Arriving at the upper landing, they discovered the dining chamber’s double-sided door was closed. Screaming and crashes could be heard through the wooden panels. “Open it, hurry!” Sheffield urged Caleb, who was rattling and tugging at the door’s handle without effect.
“It’s locked,” Caleb told him.
“Stand back.” Pushing Caleb aside, Sheffield grabbed hold of the door handle with his massive hand and rattled and tugged without effect.
“Gosh, I’d never have thought of trying that,” Caleb muttered.
Amelia stepped forward. “Let me.”
“I don’t think you’ll have better luck, ma’am,” Sheffield said kindly (in other words, condescendingly, but with a well-meaning smile).
“Nevertheless,” Amelia replied in the tone every man recognizes as A Woman at the End of Her Patience. Wisely, Sheffield retreated. Amelia pulled a delicate brass hairpin from her coiffure and, with some careful manipulation, inserted it into the door’s keyhole.
“That won’t work, ma’am,” Sheffield advised her. “It’s a myth that hairpins can open a lock. You’d best step aside so that I—”
Click.
Amelia glanced with a forgivably smug smile at Sheffield, whose own expression had gone blank. Behind him, Caleb was trying not to laugh.
“I was head girl at secondary school,” she explained. “I spent half my days unlocking things.” Sliding the clip once more into her coiffure, she opened the door and entered the dining hall.
“Oh, dear,” she said in dismay.
“What is it?” Sheffield demanded, hurrying in behind her, Caleb at his heels. Both men stopped abruptly, staring.
A long chamber stood before them, its portrait-laden walls gleaming as morning sunlight shone through several arched windows on either side.
Four narrow tables stretched toward a low dais at the far end where the masters’ table stood.
A few bench seats had toppled over, and a few table lamps lay broken among them.
But the glass-domed plinth that held Dervorguilla’s sapphire brooch stood untouched at one corner of the dais, and altogether the chamber’s state appeared not much worse than the aftermath of a rowdy dinner.
With one exception: an eerie blue tint stained the air, sparkling with dust motes.
“Magic,” Caleb said.
“Miss Tunnicliffe is not here,” Sheffield noted.
Amelia pointed to the vaulted wooden beams overhead. “Look again.”
Vanity floated high above them. Arms sprawling, purple-and-red lace dress hanging like the flag of an especially enthusiastic country, she was endeavoring to turn herself toward the door, but moving with all the grace and efficiency of a swimmer in a mud pool. “Help!” she screamed. “Help me!”
“Stay calm,” Amelia called to her in the perfectly unruffled tone that only a teacher who daily faces anxious students (to say nothing of exploding antiques) can achieve. “We’ll get you down in no time at all.”
“Aaahhhh!” Vanity replied (much as the students tended to do, especially when the antiques exploded).
“What happened to her?” Sheffield asked, his voice unsteady, his eyes straining as if he could will the girl into a safe descent.
“She got her comeuppance,” Caleb said, and Amelia whacked him with the back of her hand.
“The teaspoon has psycho-conjunctive powers,” she explained more sensibly. “And a rather twisted sense of humor. Perhaps Miss Tunnicliffe was thinking highly of herself when she tried to use it to break the brooch’s security dome.”
“How will we get her down?” Sheffield demanded, not taking his gaze from the levitating girl. “A ladder won’t reach that far. What if the magic stops? She’ll never survive the fall!”
“I have a plan,” Amelia said, although it was only now taking shape in her mind. “It’s a little risky—”
“Risky?!” Sheffield and Vanity squealed in unison.
“—but you are correct about the possibility of the magic stopping. Most thaumaturgic effects are short-lived.”
“Perhaps that’s not the best phrasing to use in Vanity’s presence, under the circumstances,” Caleb murmured.
“Sh,” Amelia whispered to him. She gave Vanity the reassuring smile that never failed to work on students whose academic prospects were almost as dire as the girl’s current situation. “Never fear, Miss Tunnicliffe! You can count on me to save you. Now, if you please, where is my teaspoon?”
“I dropped the horrid thing over there!” Vanity said, gesturing in a way that encompassed half the Hall. “All I did was touch it to the glass dome and everything went—”
“Boom?” Amelia suggested.
“More like zoom,” Caleb said, pointing upward.
“Aaaahhh!” Vanity screamed, and not just in response to their wit. She had suddenly dropped several inches before coming to an abrupt, juddering halt. “Aaaahhh!” she added, grabbing at the air.
“Aaaahh!” Sheffield screamed, gesticulating wildly.
Amelia sighed. “Caleb, would you please fetch the teaspoon?”
At once he took off running down the Hall, leaping over fallen benches with a casual athleticism that Amelia would have liked to admire, if only she had time. She returned her attention to Vanity.
“Those earrings you’re wearing—are they gold? Real gold?” Vanity nodded, her topknot bouncing. “Perfect. Take one out and throw it down to me, please.”
Weeping and bemoaning fate’s cruelty, Vanity removed an earring and dropped it. Amelia caught the little bob in her cupped palm.
“Aaaaahhhh!” Vanity resumed.
“Miss Tunnicliffe!” Sheffield called up to her. “Be brave!”
“I really could do with a nice quiet ghost hunt just now,” Amelia muttered to herself. “Right,” she said briskly to the sergeant. “I’m going to bring her down by magical means. Hopefully the descent will be slow, but—”
“I’ll catch her,” Sheffield interrupted with a determination that brooked no consideration of physics.
He strode to position himself beneath Vanity, crouching with his feet apart and arms spread—a pose that was certain to have no effect whatsoever if the girl dropped as rapidly as her earring had done.
There was no way to predict with absolute certainty what might happen, but Amelia consoled herself that she was giving Vanity the best chance she could, and that Balliol had an excellent janitorial team should it go badly.
“Found the teaspoon,” Caleb announced, crawling out from beneath the dais’s table.
Getting to his feet, he blew strands of hair away from his eyes as he looked along the Hall to Amelia.
He clearly had no idea what she was planning but trusted her nevertheless.
Excitement glinted in his expression. Amelia couldn’t help but feel the same lovely, tingly sense of fun.
This was the best part of antiquarianism—not finding magical antiques, but using them!
Reaching into her skirt pocket, she drew out the safe bag containing Sir Nigel’s thaumaturgic locket.
With sedate professionalism—disguising the fact that she’d forgotten to store the dangerous magical antique in a proper manner, and suggesting instead that she’d purposefully kept it to hand for an occasion such as this very one—she removed the locket and cast aside the bag (which is to say, set it neatly on a nearby table).
“Ready?” she asked Sheffield.
“Ready,” he affirmed.
“Ready?” she called up to Vanity.
“No!” the girl cried.
Without further ado, Amelia opened the locket’s case and placed Vanity’s gold earring inside.
Nothing happened.
Holding her breath, Amelia angled the lid slowly downward…
“Uhh.” The nervous sound shook from Vanity’s throat as she began to descend at a gentle pace…
“Aaaahhh!” It suddenly swooped up in pitch as the woman herself swooped up—then shot toward the door—then spun around—and began flying first one way, then another, like a purple-and-red bee that had drunk too much fermented nectar.
“Aaaahhh!” Sheffield hollered, running hither and yon to remain beneath her, arms still outstretched, face a study in panic. “What’s happening?!”
“I’d say the teaspoon’s metaphysical energy is interacting with that of the locket in a decidedly nonconstructive manner,” Amelia said, frowning a little.
“What?” Sheffield stared at her with frazzled bewilderment.
“The streams have crossed,” Amelia explained again. She looked along the chamber to Caleb, and he looked back in silence, his expression steady. They both knew what had to happen now.
“Must I?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “It’s your decision.”
Her frown deepened. “Bother.” With a glance at Vanity, who was on a dizzy spiral up toward the high apex of the ceiling, she turned back to Caleb and sighed. “Fine. Do it.”
He smiled at her like a blown kiss. It was lovely, beautiful—and did not help at all. Amelia watched with dark eyes as he grabbed a chair and proceeded to employ it in smashing a window.
“You needn’t look so enthused,” Amelia grumbled.
“Come on, Meely!” he replied, eyes bright. “Every Balliol student would love to do this!”
CRASH. Glass shattered.
“Get ready, Sergeant,” Amelia warned Sheffield with automatic professionalism, even while she continued to watch Caleb. He cast the chair aside, and with a force that spoke of all those weekends playing rugby, he threw the Hereford teaspoon through the broken window.
“Eeee!” Vanity fell like a stone.