Chapter Thirty-Eight
The full moon was high, the yellow shifting to white cream, licking the imposing stones of Forge House.
Listening hard, Frida could hear laughter unspooling through the countless windows, all the panes flung open on the summer heat.
She had no idea what time it was, but she could just hear, if she strained her ears, the faint clink of cutlery and the tinkle of wine glasses.
As if they were having a party in there or something.
She and Dian shared a nervous glance. The fairy definitely looked less confident now but at Frida’s questioning expression, they raised their chin determinedly.
The mottled patterns over the strong bones of their face seemed to swim before her.
Somewhere inside her, she knew this whole thing was a terrible idea.
She knew that Dian was wrong. Dian shouldn’t trust her, not at all, because she’d been lying to them since the beginning.
But the closer they drew to the house, she had to admit that a great sense of warmth was overtaking her, strengthened each time her arm brushed theirs.
Because whatever was going to happen, Dian hadn’t wanted to leave her.
And besides that, the truth was – she was afraid.
Whatever brave words she’d spoken at the pool, she didn’t want to go in this house alone.
Sir Joshua had fought for the rights of extraordinary creatures all his life. She was struggling to conceive of him as someone who would support the corruption and entrapment of magical objects. But she couldn’t help her mind turning over the other LEZites.
There’d been Lord Denver, Sir Joshua’s infamous childhood friend.
When it had become common knowledge that he’d made a large portion of his money from plantations in the Caribbean and had been actively involved in the transatlantic slave trade, Management had quickly removed his portrait from his place next to Gladstone in the café.
The portrait hadn’t been there when Frida, Antony and Hamish had started as keepers, but when they’d learnt of it, they’d gone on a deep dive to see if there were any other dire secrets in the LEZ’s past.
They’d been phenomenally relieved to learn that Sir Joshua had argued furiously with Denver in parliament, clashing over the bill to abolish slavery.
And whilst most of the other LEZites had been blindingly rich, they hadn’t found any other true red flags, not like Lord Denver.
Or had they? Perhaps, as bright-eyed keepers fresh out of the training program, dazzled by Izzy and drunk on the fumes of manure, they hadn’t looked all that hard.
She remembered that there’d been an article about William Cliff, a newspaper editor, claiming that he’d been a spy for the East India Company, the notorious British colonising machine that had dominated trade routes and controlled huge parts of the Indian subcontinent.
Edward Caval, who’d travelled with Sir Joshua on the expedition to rescue the terracotta dragon, had been a renowned collector of pornographic drawings – high end, but still.
Laurence Harding, a poet, and Sir Joshua’s alleged secret lover, had written countless books extolling the sublime power of the extraordinary, including sonnets to Fireheart that were believed to be some of the greatest in British history.
However, Antony had found one poem Harding had written that described his dream to kill the last white rhino in Africa.
And the sisters. Frida glanced at the serpentine lake, glittering in the distance.
None of the sisters had tried to release their kelpies.
Only Jane. Why hadn’t she questioned that?
The truth was, what did she really know about any of them, beyond their elaborate portraits?
She pushed away the sense that reality was suddenly no more than a piece of weak glass, and steeled herself with the knowledge that nothing was simple, least of all history.
The only real answers lay inside these stone walls to her left.
‘This way,’ she managed to whisper.
Dian looked as if they were afraid a horde of bloodthirsty humans might burst through the open windows at any moment.
Frida almost couldn’t believe their courage when they held out their hand to her.
Giving them a brave smile, she reached down to lace her fingers through theirs just as the scent of growing things and summer rain surrounded her, and they submerged, suspended and weightless in a cool, calming rainstorm.
Dian’s hand an anchor, stopping her from floating away.
She marvelled at the intimacy of it, gooseflesh on her arms, as she let out a choking, awed laugh.
Her heartbeat rubbed against Dian’s like a caress on a watery evening.
The world was just there, just beyond the edge of the raindrop.
She could see it. But here they were, safe.
Moth, somewhere, moaned dryly.
‘No one can see us?’ Frida asked, still not quite believing.
Dian bobbed their chin. Then they hesitated, the tips of their pointed ears heating, ‘I haven’t shared pathways like these with anyone but Moth for a long time. I want you to know that is why I found it – difficult – at first.’
Frida blinked up at them, raindrops dancing in her peripheral vision. She didn’t know what to say. ‘But you did it, for me?’
They glanced down at her, grousing, ‘Well, I didn’t have much choice.’
But what Frida heard was somewhat else altogether.
Their tone was tender, and the way their fingers entwined with hers, so different to how it had been at the start, it made her heart hammer.
For a moment, Dian seemed to be made of water, translucent in the twinkling of reflected droplets.
She wondered if she looked like that too.
Then Dian looked away, and the moment slipped like smoke, leaving her breathless, as their eyes landed on Forge House.
With wordless agreement, together they headed out from beneath the shelter of the shadows.
Unseen by prying eyes, they approached the back of the house.
The memory of an ornate banister under her hand, the click of her lace-up school shoes on the paving stones, the scent of dust and wood polish in her nose .
. . it all came flooding back, even through the unreality of the raindrops.
Antony and Hamish had always found it baffling that she had a photographic memory for the feeding habits of some obscure race of dragons from the upper highlands of Mongolia and yet couldn’t remember to pay her rent on time.
The layout of Forge House fell well within the sacred circle of things Frida Gave A Shit About, and she nodded with satisfaction when she found a small outdoor staircase, heading down to a door on basement level.
If she was right, this would bring them out behind the kitchens, to the pantries and such like.
What they’d do after that she wasn’t quite sure, but maybe they’d have a chance to do some reconnaissance.
She stood for a moment with her hand on the doorknob, listening to the vague crash of pans, and an occasional muffled shout, coming from behind the thick walls.
‘You’re sure?’ she whispered, glancing up at Dian.
She could feel their entire body trembling, startling at each crash.
Their expression flickered with emotion, the colours two tone – an eery blue, melting through the silver of the water.
Stripped of all thorns, bleak terror was written in every beautiful line of their face.
And yet their eyes met hers unyielding, giving her their answer.
She gave a helpless laugh and wrapped her fingers tighter through theirs. ‘Right then.’
‘Are we doing this or what?’ Moth complained. ‘Deathly adventures are no fun if we have to keep talking about them all the time.’
She didn’t miss the look of gratitude on Dian’s face when they touched a gentle finger to Moth’s furry legs and the spider scuttled across their shoulders. Her heart gave a twinge, thinking about how history had been so wrong about fairies. How she had been so wrong about fairies.
Then she opened the door, and together they stepped inside Forge House.