Chapter Thirty-Three
The crowd lingered late into the night, after the lights had come back up.
Madame Ivanova excused herself almost immediately, looking drawn and waxen. Nini and Seph both helped her to her room and called for a restorative broth and a bit of bread, which they had to insist she eat before she slept.
Whether it was simple performance exhaustion or otherworldly consequence for her gift, Seph did not know.
What she did know was that the woman was truly physically distressed, and because of that, she put aside her aversion to the peacock feathers, at least until she was freed of her jewelry and stays, and tucked the woman into bed.
She went back to the ballroom and retrieved two jack-o’-lanterns and brought them to her door as well.
Even if her stories about filtering the voices of the dead were nonsense, they might bring her comfort. At this point, Seph was convinced that Madame Ivanova believed she had a gift, even if Seph herself was not entirely convinced about speaking to the dead.
After all, none of her long-passed friends or family had had anything to say tonight.
She supposed she hadn’t really lost a lot of people.
“I was told once,” Nini said quietly, after they’d departed the room, “that Travellers rarely become ghosts. A nomad does not often have unfinished business because transience is simply a part of who they are, beginning and end.”
Seph could only blink at her.
Nini squeezed her forearm and went her own way, apparently wishing to retire early as well.
She was still thinking about it when she found Rhys in the ballroom, and apparently, it showed on her face, because he immediately came to her and asked her if she was well.
“What?” she said, her brow wrinkled. “Oh. Yes. Tonight was … odd.”
“Odd,” he agreed, taking a long sip of his wine. “That it was.”
“‘Twpsyn’?” she asked, looking up at him.
It made him grin. “‘Twit.’ ‘Silly boy,’” he translated. “It was … Well, I suppose it was like how I call you ‘gwrach.’ It might offend someone else, but between Hughes and me, it was a term of endearment.”
“Oh,” said Seph.
Had Madame Ivanova guessed that?
Was it a common word in Welsh?
“My friends,” came Merlin’s voice as he sidled up behind him, looking surprisingly hale, given the hour. “This was everything I could have wanted. The entirety of it. But alas, my constitution is not what it once was, and I am afraid it is time for me to retire.”
“Of course,” said Seph, reaching out to hold the man’s shoulder and put a kiss on his cheek. “Rest well, Merlin.”
Merlin gave her a fatherly smile and turned to shake Rhys’s hand. “Take care of one another,” he told them. “We changelings must stick together.”
And then he turned and departed.
Apparently, they had been the last to receive his farewells.
Rhys stifled a yawn and gave a lazy sigh, drawing Seph closer to his side. “I’d invite him to the wedding,” he said, dropping his chin on top of her head, “but I think he said he was departing once Samhain had passed.”
“To unknown shores,” Seph remembered, giving a sad, little sigh. “I shall miss him.”
“Yes,” said Rhys. “I shall too.”
She sucked in a little breath and squeezed Rhys’s arms. “I have to thank him. Before he goes. For the invitation. For … For making us work together. For …”
“Thank him tomorrow,” Rhys said, reaching up to cup her face with both his hands. “But I think he already knows we are appreciative. I am certain of it, in fact. And remember what he said when we first got here?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “What?”
“That he didn’t wish to waste what little time he had left on manners,” Rhys told her. “Let him sleep. He’s earned it.”
She twisted a little to look at the empty space in the doorway behind her but sagged, nodding. “You are right,” she told him. “He knows.”
“You know what we could do,” he said, dragging his syllables into a suggestive drawl, “to honor the excellent matchmaking skills of our good friend …?”
She cut him a narrow-eyed look but could not hold it for more than a second, a giggle bubbling up in her throat as she dropped his arms and reached for his hands instead. “Good idea,” she said. “Let’s say our goodnights.”
*
When they awoke for the breakfast bell, it was with a tinge of regret in the air. This was likely their last morning in this room. Their last waking in this bed.
And Seph had to remind herself that every end was a beginning too to bat away the sense of mourning at that thought.
What else had they learned here, in this place, if not that?
“Mr. Cagney will likely arrive around luncheon,” Rhys told her as he carefully closed the trunk lid on their props, the curtain rods, and the velvet bolts of fabric. “We have time before we have to go.”
Seph nodded and took his hand as they descended this last time, for this final breakfast.
She wondered if Merlin would stay to see them off, or if he would go first, after announcing his chosen winner.
She wondered a great many things.
But when they arrived to the breakfast table, it was to their fellow guests, all standing awkwardly around the chairs, none of which had been pulled out yet, circling a box in the center of the table, and a letter, pinned to the top.
“Well, isn’t anyone going to read it?” Nini demanded, hands on her hips, looking from person to person. “I can’t reach it. Someone hand it to me.”
Rhys rounded on the footmen, standing on either side of the dining entry, and pointed to the blond one, the prig. “What happened?” he demanded. “Where is Merlin?”
“Your host is gone,” the footman said softly, giving a gentle shrug. “He went in the night.”
“He went,” Seph repeated, furrowing her brow, “or he left?”
The footman only shrugged again, this time turning his hands outward. “He is gone.”
“‘To my esteemed friends,’” Nini said loudly, propping herself up onto a chair as she clutched the letter in her hands. “‘I have performed my final vanishing act. Did you see me disappear? I suspect you did not, for I am, in all things, a professional.’”
The others turned to her, one by one, each drifting toward their seats, dragging the chairs out, slumping down, silent and stunned as the paper wrinkled in Nini’s hands.
Madame Ivanova began to cry softly, with Father Wheeler placing a comforting palm on her shoulder.
“‘I could not choose a winner amongst you,’” Nini continued, her voice a little raw, “‘for you all did what I asked you to do.
You all made me believe in magic. And so, I have no choice but to divide what I have amongst you.
My book of tricks has been separated and sequestered into loose pages, each designated to those of you who might find the best use for them.
“‘Inside this box, you will find the pages, labeled and bound, as well as my mask and the whole of my estate: twelve pounds sterling, to be divided evenly amongst you.’”
“‘Twel… Twelve pounds’?!” Rhys said, his voice kicking up an octave. “That’s it?”
“What about this house?” Master Yuri asked, gesturing around them. “The estate?”
Nini held up a finger, her eyes flicking back up as she turned the letter over in her hands.
“‘I spent all I had saved in my final years in this last, glorious month of living. I rented the priory grange house. I paid for luxury and ease. I would apologize for misleading you all, but alas, it was quite literally my vocation to do so.’”
Seph snorted, covering her mouth quickly at the narrowed eyes from Master Yuri and the Breton mesmerist.
“‘After all, I am an illusionist,’” Nini continued. “‘Did you really think I could own a house like this one? If you did, you are paid far better for marvels than I ever was.’”
“What about the mask?” Master Yuri asked, looking more stunned than offended by this trickery. “The star mask?”
“‘My mask and cape, I bequeath to Miss Persephone’s Oddities and Curiosities. Miss Persephone, I feel, is the only one amongst you who might display it as a relic, rather than lose it in a trunk,’” Nini read, smiling to herself.
She glanced up at them and shook her head.
“I resent that, you know. The circus has a whole tent of relics.”
“But I label my fakes,” Seph told her, raising her brows. “And he wants those who see this to know it is real.”
“Bah,” said Nini. “People love fakes.”
Rhys tittered at that but did not otherwise comment.
“‘The only trick you will not find in my book is the one I performed for you all on your first night here,’” Nini continued, going back to the letter. “‘It is a secret I will keep, if you will allow me the indulgence. After all, one has to impress upon arrival in the next life.
“‘And so, I say farewell and thank you to those who gathered here. May we meet again, one way or another.’”
For many minutes afterward, everyone was silent.
Everyone was somber.
And then, with tears pricking her eyes, Seph began to giggle. She giggled and put her hands over her mouth and shook her head and still could not stop.
Nini laughed next, a tear escaping down her cheek as she shook her head, her narrow shoulders trembling with the oddest feeling of loss and joy.
And then the priest.
And then the medium.
And then the footman too.
They all laughed, and cried, and sighed in wonder.
Because in this business, that was how one said goodbye.