Wayward Page 4

  And now she had two days left.

  Jasper said she was overthinking it, that clear and visual intention was more powerful than knowing the specifics of what you were trying to achieve. But clear and visual intention was failing her, and she would try anything.

  She fixed her eyes on the jar in the middle of the floor and summoned her magic, which rose within her as always. It’s there, she told herself. It’s strong enough. You’re strong enough.

  Bloom and grow, she commanded the cutting. She didn’t need to say the words aloud, even under her breath. She was channelling her magic through her fingers and into the frail little twig in its jar of soil, where it would, hopefully, bind and stay.

  The magic rose like smoke curling from a candle as Cassia directed it to her fingers. She knew the spell so well that the intention felt easy and clean. Bloom, grow, become a rosebush and flower. Muscle memory curled her hands into fists, turned them towards the sky, and unfurled her fingers like petals unfurling from a bud. Her hands couldn’t command the jar and its contents, only her magic could do that, but it helped her visualise what she wanted to achieve and that was vitally important.

  A rosebush. A beautiful, blooming rosebush covered in vibrant red flowers.

  The magic streamed from her fingers and enveloped the jar, the little cutting shivered, and Cassia’s breath hitched. Was this it? She banished her excitement and firmed up her intention. Bloom and grow. Bloom and grow.

  A leaf. Then another. The cutting stretched for the opening of the jar, for freedom. White roots appeared in the soil, pressing up against the glass.

  “Yes,” Cassia heard herself say. Her hands shook. But she had got this far before. She needed to maintain it.

  It was as the first bud formed that Cassia realised she wasn’t alone.

  “Are you doing magic?”

  She screamed. Her magic spiked. The jar shattered, spilling dirt and rosebush everywhere. Her intention skittered away like a dream upon waking.

  “Who’s there?”

  She had locked the door. Was this magic? Trick walls and false silence? Her frightened gaze went to the unnerving stewards’ uniform in the corner. It hadn’t moved.

  “I am,” replied a voice, childlike and lilting.

  A shiver ran up Cassia’s spine. The voice was coming from the shadows between the shelves.

  “Show yourself,” said Cassia. She backed towards her bag in the corner. The door key was inside.

  The little voice laughed. “I can’t,” it said. “I’m a doll.”

  “A doll.” Just a doll. It was an enchanted children’s toy. Cassia approached the voice, her mind soothed – embarrassed, even – but her heart still catching up. It beat so hard she was shaking.

  “Where are you?” she said, looking up and down the domino rows of shelves.

  “Here.”

  The reply was inconclusive. Cassia picked an aisle and, turning sideways to fit, slipped between the shelves.

  “I’m here,” the doll said again.

  There. She turned towards the voice and jumped. A face was looking down at her from behind a jar of viscous red liquid, stretched and warped by the shape of the glass into something monstrous. But a protruding foot – small and booted, on a stubby, jointless leg – gave the doll away. Cassia pushed the jar aside and lifted the doll down.

  Enchanted dolls, spelled to hold simple conversations – usually to encourage young Sorcerers to practise their magic – were enduringly popular. This one looked old. The huge skirt of her purple dress was two decades out of fashion, as was the severe centre part in her black hair and the ringlets framing her face. A crack ran down one side of her white porcelain face from her forehead to her jaw. She had vivid green eyes, like Cassia, to match her black hair. In fact, she was just the type of doll one of her relatives might pick out because it looked like her. She could have been Cassia’s when she was a child, had she been born twenty years earlier.

  She had never had an enchanted doll herself. Had she grown up in the Heart, perhaps someone would have thought to gift her one, but Changeling children played with wooden animals that would help them learn new forms. Cassia’s most beloved childhood toy had been a model lion.

  “And how did you get here?” she murmured as she smoothed the doll’s skirts.

  “I think I was stolen,” the doll replied cheerfully.

  “Stolen?”

  No reply. Cassia assumed the magic had exhausted its conversational capabilities – she doubted the enchantment stored any meaningful memories – but then: “I had a little girl, but she looked the other way, and I was stolen.”

  Things I’ve found. Things I’ve made.

  “By a young man?” said Cassia, uncertain. “Red-brown hair, blue eyes?”

  “Yes. Him.”

  So on top of meddling in experimental magic – magic that raised the hairs on Cassia’s neck – Jasper stole from children.

  “Why?” she said aloud. To make a test subject of an enchanted doll was vaguely macabre, but perhaps it was fitting of someone who would steal one from a little girl rather than walk into a shop.

  “That doesn’t matter,” said the doll in her blandly happy voice. “It’s brought us together. Let’s practise magic. I’ll help you.”

  Cassia let out a snort. “There’s no helping me, I’m afraid.”

  “Everyone can learn,” said the doll, predictably.

  “Yes, I’m sure. And what help are you supposed to be?”

  “You can practise your spells on me.”

  Cassia turned her so her dead glass eyes pointed to the scattering of glass and dirt in the centre of the floor. “Do you want to end up like that?”

  “Do you want to keep failing?”

  Cassia laughed in surprise. She had been expecting something like you can do it or just keep trying. And had she imagined it, or had there been a note of challenge in the doll’s otherwise amiable tone?

  “Ouch.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m here to help you.”

  “Alright. Do your best, then.”

  “Can you glamour my hair blonde?”

  Cassia deflated. It was all good fun to play along with the doll – until she was reminded that the spells it suggested were for eight-year-olds, and she couldn’t do them. “Unlikely,” she admitted.

  “Have a go.”

  With a sigh, Cassia slipped out from between the shelves. There was a stepladder at the end of one stack, and she put it in the centre of the floor and sat the doll upon it. “This was your idea,” she told it. “I take no responsibility for the outcome.”

  She took several steps back and summoned her magic.

  “Think of your magic, and you’ll feel it between your chest and your stomach,” said the doll helpfully.

  “Earth and stars,” muttered Cassia, already raising her arms to cast the glamour. “I know how to cast a glamour.”

  The doll’s response was quiet. “Could have fooled me.”

  Again, Cassia laughed in shock, then in delight, and something wonderful happened. She forgot to think of all the ways she could get the enchantment wrong, and before she could command it, her magic had risen to her throat and was waiting eagerly for her words.

  “Blonde,” she murmured hastily, visualising the doll’s outdated ringlets growing lighter. “Blonde, blonde, blonde.”

  The spell flowed smoothly from her tongue and shimmered over the doll as the glamour began to take hold. Beginning at the tips, the doll’s hair changed colour, until her ringlets and the intricate bun at the nape of her neck were golden yellow.

  Cassia’s breath rushed out of her.

  Then the glamour failed, like a changing trick of the light.

  “No.” The last shimmer of magic brushed her senses as the illusion fell apart. The light reflecting off blonde locks hung in the doll’s eyes for a moment longer, shining gold then vanishing.

  Cassia sighed. “I’m afraid the novelty of this has worn off,” she said, moving to collect the doll and put her away.

  “But we’ve only just begun!”

  Cassia halted. She thought she’d seen the doll’s eyes following her. They were looking right at one another. She stepped experimentally to the side, and the illusion was broken; the glass eyes stared inanimately past her.

  “One more spell, and then we can play,” said the doll. “Can you cast one to mend my face?”

  Mend was the most elementary bit of magic, so commonly used a Changeling in Camden had been able to explain it to her when she was a child. As foolish as it made her feel, Cassia didn’t want the doll to see her fail at it.

  “Your face is lovely just as it is,” she said, turning away.

  Again the doll was silent a while. “But I want to be beautiful like you.”

  Cassia looked warily over her shoulder and let out a sigh of relief to see the doll’s eyes weren’t on her. It was empty, pleasant chatter, that was all. Uncannily sophisticated, but nothing to be afraid of.

  “Well. In that case…”

  Cassia crouched down in front of the stepladder so they were eye to eye.

  “Do you have any final words?” she said as she traced the crack in the porcelain with one finger and thought again of the exploding jar. “Just in case.”

  “My final words are… I like your hair.”

  “Oh.” Cassia was definitely imagining things now; a toy could not possibly sound wistful about Cassia’s more stylish hair. “Well, if we both make it through this, I promise I’ll do yours just like it.”

  She stepped back and called her magic, picturing the crack in the porcelain healing as she channelled it to her fingertips. Mend, she nudged, and the crack down the doll’s face vanished from the jaw upwards, like a seamstress was pulling her stitches tight. Cassia waited.
The doll’s green eyes flashed gold; an echo of magic? Whatever it was, the spell held. Cassia let out a breath.

  “Marvellously done,” said the doll.

  Cassia couldn’t agree. She made a non-committal noise.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Sometimes I get lucky,” Cassia said with a shrug. “But that’s no use if I can’t reproduce the results, or diagnose the problem.”

  “Don’t worry. Practice makes perfect!”

  Cassia found a neglected broom, and started sweeping the glass and earth into a pile in the corner. It wasn’t like Jasper could complain about the mess. “I suppose I’m the exception that proves that particular rule.”

  “Do you feel your magic when you call it? Between your chest and your stomach?”

  “I already told you yes,” said Cassia, pushing the broom too hard and sending shards of glass skittering across the floorboards.

  “And you hold your intention clearly in your mind when—”

  “Please don’t. We were off to such a good start.”

  The doll did as she asked and went silent. Cassia finished her half-attempt at cleaning and had almost forgotten the doll when she spoke again.

  “Some people have less magic than others. That’s—”

  “Let me guess. Nothing to be ashamed of?”

  She knew what the children’s spell books said about power. You were born with a certain amount of it. Training could make up some of the difference, but you couldn’t increase the raw amount that was yours to control. But you had other talents, children were promised.

  No one ever warned you those other talents mattered less.

  “Actually, I was going to say that it’s unfair.”

  Cassia glanced over at the doll. She had definitely heard a sharpness cut through the sugar of her voice this time.

  “I want to help you.”

  “Well.” Cassia collected her bag and prepared to sneak back out of the Wending Place. “I appreciate that.”

  “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” came the voice as Cassia fished for the key.

  She had been thinking about it. She was too old to play with an enchanted doll; Jasper said the junk room was completely private, but if someone had caught her promising to fix a doll’s hair she would have died of mortification on the spot. Besides, the doll didn’t really care if she left her behind or reneged on a promise. She was an inanimate object, merely spelled to give the vague appearance of life.

  And yet, whoever had enchanted her had done so incredibly skilfully. Cassia had little cousins who had such dolls, and theirs didn’t have a sense of humour or a trace of sarcasm to them. How did one even spell an object that didn’t have real eyes to recognise a person’s hair? It was rather ingenious.

  For this reason and this reason alone – and absolutely not because she didn’t have a friend in the world, nor anyone to talk to – Cassia swept the doll off the stepladder.

  “Do you have a name?” she asked it.

  “My name is whatever you want it to be.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” she muttered as she settled the doll into her bag. She was too big to fit comfortably, and her little porcelain head protruded from the top. “Alright. I suppose I’ll call you… Violet.”

  5

  It was still early in both the morning and the evening when Ollivan arrived at the library on Brompton Road in the get-up of a gentleman.

  The librarian was at his work when he stepped inside, but he glanced up and did a double take. Ollivan had taken no more than three steps into the building before he rounded the desk and hastened towards him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t fret, Frederick. I’m only awaiting a message.”

  Frederick looked him up and down, arms folded across his chest. The attempt at intimidation didn’t suit him. He was a slender man, mousy haired and moustached, with wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. A librarian, through and through. No one would ever suspect him of anything more.

  “I’ll deliver it to you,” he said.

  “Oh.” Ollivan smiled. “Not this message.”

  Frederick shook his head. “I won’t have any more trouble from you, Ollivan—”

  “And I’ll be none, on my honour.” He put a hand on his heart. “Come now, Frederick. We both know you’re not going to manhandle me out of here, at least not successfully.” Frederick raised a hand and Ollivan sensed magic. “And you’re having far too busy a morning to try anything like that,” he added, looking around the library meaningfully. There were a dozen people in the main room, some barely out of earshot.

  Frederick was turning red, but he lowered his hand. He was a proud man who valued his position and was loath to appear incompetent. And Ollivan specialised in making people look incompetent.

  Throwing a final glare over his shoulder, Frederick retreated to his desk. Ollivan felt the librarian’s wary eye on him as he meandered to the back of the library. In a gap between two shelves, in the much-ignored politics section – much ignored because it was poorly stocked; poorly stocked for this very reason – hung a large and unusually extravagant mirror. It filled the space from floor to ceiling, arching at the top under a gold-embossed medallion in the centre of the frame, and was wide enough for four people to stand side by side and see themselves.

  Ollivan pulled a chair up in front of it and sat, anticipation fizzing beneath his skin. He admired the surface of the glass, entirely ordinary and yet perfectly peculiar; the way it threw the light in the library back at unexpected angles, the faint blue hue to its surface. Someone cleared their throat. Ollivan turned. Through a series of gaps between shelves, Frederick was watching him from the desk. This particular mirror was always in Frederick’s line of sight. Managing the library was a secondary responsibility. Watching this mirror was the first. Ollivan raised two fingers to him in greeting, then checked the time.

  It wouldn’t be long now. He straightened his tie and made himself comfortable. Frederick’s busy eyes continued to bore into him. Ollivan’s mind wandered once again to roast duck. To daffodils.

  Minutes passed, each one longer than the next, before movement in the mirror caught his eye. Someone was approaching. Ollivan got to his feet.

  The young man appeared to float through the shelves behind Ollivan, stepping through one row after another as if they were a mirage, until he was framed in the middle of the glass. Then he raised a leg over the mirror frame and stepped out into the library.

  A half second later, Frederick bounded into the aisle. “And who are you?” he snapped at the man from the mirror, gulping down air from his quick sprint. There was probably not much vigorous exercise involved in being a librarian or watching a mirror.

  “Virgil Pike,” said the young man dispassionately, then he held out a letter between long fingers. “You can show this to the enforcers when they question you.”

  Frederick paled. He snatched the letter out of his hand and tore it open. “Why will they question me?” he said, his voice rising in pitch and volume.

  Virgil levelled a glare at Ollivan. It was so morose that Ollivan convinced himself it was bad news. The relief that washed over him at his answer set him trembling.

  “Because Ollivan Sims is going back to the Witherward.”

  * * *

  The tutor lets you break the teacup yourself.

  “Good. Now, mend.”

  You’ve cast this spell before. It’s easy. But today Aelius and Hester are watching from the drawing-room window. No wonder they’re curious; everyone here is a Changeling.

  Everyone but you.

  Your magic blossoms in your abdomen and your cheeks heat. Can they see it? Does it look strange to them when you work your magic? You don’t want to know, so you nudge it back down.

  “What happened?” the tutor asks you gently.

  “It’s too difficult,” you mumble.

  It’s not a lie.

  6

  TWO HOURS EARLIER

  “How do I look?”

  Cassia twirled dramatically, the skirt of her dress fanning around her. It was pale pink satin, with fuchsia ruched ribbons at the neckline and along the edges of each layer of the skirt. She thoroughly hated it.