Changeling (Sorcery and Society Book 1)

by Harper, Molly

  “You’d think she was using magic, but of course, she couldn’t.” Callista laughed long and loud, as if it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Alicia offered her polite smile, but Ivy stared at her tormentor as if Callista had finally lost her mind. “Isn’t that right, Cassandra?”

  Callista gave me a pointed look, as if I was supposed to use this opportunity to praise her management of her servant. But all I could do was stare at her. She always seemed so controlled and confident in classes. But I’d seen the same sort of mania in Mary’s eyes, when she looked at Owen. Callista would humiliate Alicia, put her in the way of greater harm, if she thought it would bring her closer to her brother. We were fortunate that there hadn’t been a convenient carriage close by, otherwise Callista might have thrown Alicia under it.

  “Doesn’t my Sarah have the most wonderful talent for stubborn stains?” she asked again, her too-wide smile still pasted on as she nodded her head ever so subtly toward Alicia.

  I didn’t want to play this game anymore. I didn’t want to be Callista’s lackey, and I didn’t want there to be any doubt where I stood.

  What would Mrs. Winter do in this situation?

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, well, if you’ll excuse us, Callista, we were just about to go thank Mrs. Dalrymple for throwing such a lovely social. Good luck with your… stains.”

  Callista’s beautiful face flushed purple in anger, but there were far too many adults present for her to lash out or make a scene. She would get even for my show of “defiance,” I was sure of it. But instead of the dread I expected, I felt oddly liberated, so much so that I burst out laughing – which only served to make Callista angrier

  I linked arms with Alicia and Ivy and let them lead me toward Mrs. Dalrymple’s settee. It felt right to be with these two and not just because I expected we would be safe from any more tart-related “accidents.” Despite Alicia’s apparent invisibility and Ivy’s stigma, I wasn’t ashamed to walk with them; not like moving as part of Callista’s flock. No one avoided eye contact with me. They didn’t clear a path. For once, I felt “a part” of the group instead of “apart.”

  We hovered at the edge of the dancefloor, where Ivy made her little observations about the dancers – who was related to whom and whose families were feuding. Alicia was quiet, studying the pairings and movements as if she could see patterns that we couldn’t. It was no wonder that we rarely saw her around the school building. She was so still and quiet that she was practically statuary.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked quietly out of the corner of my mouth.

  “My brother,” she said, blithely.

  I followed Alicia’s line of sight to a dark-haired teenager who stood a head taller than most of the grown men present. He turned to face us and I gasped.

  The boy from the sidewalk, all those weeks ago, the one I’d run into. He was Alicia McCray’s brother. I didn’t know whether to smile or run. He was just as handsome as I remembered, even if his face was tensed by the effort of moving through the crowd, avoiding Callista and her cronies. Rosemarie tried to approach him on the right, he turned to start a conversation with someone on his right. Millicent tried to flank on his left, with Callista closing in on his right, he turned his back to both, so he could be introduced to a classmate’s younger sister. All the while, he moved closer and closer to the door.

  “Poor Gavin,” Alicia sighed. “He does hate these socials. He’d much rather be locked away in his library. He only came today to check on me. Mother makes him.”

  “I don’t know why he hates them,” I countered, smiling hesitantly. “That was some of the most graceful dancing I’ve ever seen. Very fancy footwork.”

  Alicia did something I didn’t expect. She burst out laughing, throwing her little head back and guffawing so long and loud that the dancers nearest us stopped mid-turn to stare. Ivy’s brown eyes went saucer-wide and she opened her prune-and-tan lace fan over her mouth to cover her own unladylike grin.

  Across the dance-floor, a dark head snapped in our direction. Gavin’s dark grey eyes narrowed at the unusual sound of his sister cackling like a loon at a fancy society party. I wanted to hide behind the nearest potted plant. Would he recognize me? Had he given me a single thought since that morning? I looked nothing like the half-grown waif who’d bounced off of him. But still, I felt like he could see through mask Mrs. Winter had painted on me, to the drab, weak girl I’d been.

  But then, I saw a natural smile bloom over his face, like the clouds of his polite, distant half-smirk parting to make way for real delight. And I couldn’t help but feel that I’d been hit by some nerve-shattering spell. Or possibly a horseless carriage.

  “Fancy footwork,” Alicia giggled as Gavin moved closer. “I’ll have to remember to tell him that later. He loathed dancing lessons when he was my age. He actually created a potion that made him appear to have monkey pox, just to avoid them.”

  “So, he faked having monkey pox every week?”

  “At the time, he wasn’t thinking in the long-term,” she said airily.

  “Alicia,” he sighed, ignoring propriety and bending at the waist to hug his tiny sister. She giggled and beat lightly at his arms as he picked her up. “I’m just going to take you home with me. You’ve been at school long enough.”

  “Not funny,” she told him sternly as he put her back on her feet.

  “But you’re so portable, sister.”

  I laughed, but I tried to cover it with my hand and it came out of as snort. My cheeks flushed hot as Gavin’s gaze snapped toward me.

  Oh, no. He’d just heard me snort like a barnyard animal.

  “And who is this?” Gavin whispered. “Have you made friends?”

  Alicia grinned broadly. “I hope so. This is Ivy Cowell, whose grandmother is hosting our gathering today. And this is a new student, Cassandra Reed, who recently rescued me from a wardrobe crisis. Cassandra, this is my brother, Gavin McCray, he rescues me from everything else.”

  Gavin smiled that sweet smile I remembered, but there was no flash of recognition as he took my hand and bowed over it. It hurt, just a tiny bit, that he didn’t know me, but at the same time, I was relieved. A pulse of warmth fluttered through the metal dragonfly’s wing. Gavin startled and turned my hand over in his. “That’s quite the magical mark you have there.”

  “Thank you,” I said as he took my other hand and put the two halves of the dragonfly together. “It’s new.”

  Ivy frowned at me. I shrugged. It’s new? Why didn’t I pretend to be mute? Why?

  But Gavin didn’t respond to my socially awkward volley. He studied my hands carefully, turning the mark this way and that to inspect all the angles. It would have been fascinating to watch if he hadn’t been treating my hands as if they weren’t attached to my body.

  Alicia cleared her throat. “Gavin. Please stop treating Miss Reed like a fascinating lab specimen.”

  Gavin’s cheeks went red and he flashed me an embarrassed grin as he released my hand. “I apologize, Miss Reed. And Miss Cowell…”

  Just as he was reaching out for Ivy’s hand, Gavin whipped his head toward Alicia. “Wait, did you say something about a wardrobe crisis?”

  “Story of my life,” Ivy muttered, pulling her hand behind her back.

  Alicia’s shoulders jerked. “Just a little spill. Cassandra was kind enough to lend me her ribbon to cover the stain.”

  “That was very kind of you,” Gavin said, staring at me, considering. He startled at the sight of something over my shoulder, frowning. “Er, Alicia, I’ll speak to you soon. Ladies, it was lovely to meet you, but I have to go. Now.”

  I turned to see Callista bearing down on us with a bright smile that didn’t quite match her determined step. Gavin disappeared into the crowd, ducking in the small spaces between people and reaching the door in remarkable time. Callista’s face fell into a disappointed snarl. I turned quickly to keep her from seeing me smirk.

  “This party was far more entertaining than I exp
ected it to be,” Ivy sighed as Callista flounced back to her flunkies. “I could really use something to eat.”

  “Agreed.” I slipped my hand through Alicia’s arm and gently dragged her along with us. “Anything but strawberry tarts.”

  “That’s not funny,” Alicia told me primly.

  “It’s a little funny,” Ivy retorted.

  We’d almost made it to the refreshment table, when a portly man with thinning grey hair and mutton chop sideburns that barely covered his drooping jowls stepped into our path. And his face seemed frozen in disapproval, as if he smelled something rancid.

  “Mr. Crenshaw,” Ivy chirped uneasily. “How lovely to see you.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t often attend this sort of occasion, but I was informed that I simply couldn’t miss it,” Mr. Crenshaw rumbled, his voice low, like a barely repressed growl. His gloved hand clutched at his ebony walking stick, topped with an ornately carved silver owl.

  Alicia squirmed under his scrutiny, her wide green eyes bouncing back and forth between us, as if she wasn’t sure what to do in this situation, despite her no-doubt extensive etiquette training.

  I stepped back from Mr. Crenshaw, whose flat, dark gaze had turned on me. I was reminded, uncomfortably so, of the bird specimens in Mr. Winter’s study with their blank glass stare. He reached toward me, breaking social protocol, as if he was going to pull me back into his orbit.

  Ivy turned on her heel, breaking protocol even further and walking away without so much as a curtsy. Who was this man and what about him made him so intimidating that Ivy was willing to abandon courtesy so completely at her grandmother’s party? I glanced towards Mrs. Dalrymple, who was distracted by condescension toward some other young debutante. I took another step back and I felt the hem of my skirt snag on the floor. I looked down to see the tip of his cane pinning my skirt to the hardwood, keeping me from moving away.

  When I looked up, Mr. Crenshaw smirked at me. His eyes, so glassy and empty before, seemed to shift, the pupils becoming so wide that there hardly seemed to be any iris. I felt a tickle at the edge of my mind, like a mouse scratching under the door, trying to get in. I felt oddly detached from the sensation, aware but not susceptible to it. I’d read about this.

  Ceremancy, the art of creeping into someone’s brain and making them a puppet, controlling their moods and actions. Ceremancy was a “trade secret” of House Mountfort, a skill the family had perfected in the healing halls to calm patients and make them more cooperative during exams. Though the spell only lasted a few moments, it was a skill that made other houses nervous. The Mountforts claimed ceremancy was harmless because of their Hippocratic Oath – a rare leftover from the pre-Restoration Days – prevented them from doing any harm. Though he was a descendant of House Mountfort, it was a skill that Mr. Winter never deigned to practice. I got the impression he found it distasteful, somehow, to root around in another person’s skull.

  Mr. Crenshaw, who I now realized had a pair of scales etched in the golden cufflinks at wrists, did not seem to have the same scruples. He was trying to mesmerize me, right here in a room full of people. And to what purpose? To make me embarrass myself, the Winter family? Or to gain some sort of unseemly control over me?

  I was too shocked to form any sort of response. And I was surprised that instead of terror or paralysis, I felt anger. Indignation. Any control he hoped to gain over me was eroded by the all-consuming rage I felt toward Mr. Crenshaw. Who was this man that I barely knew and who did he think he was, to treat me so in a highly public place? I thought proper young Guardian ladies were shielded from this sort of behavior. I thought I was supposed to be some precious commodity, shielded from distress and boorishness. What was it about me that brought out this predatory urge in people? Could they sense the non-magical blood in me? Did I have an invisible sign on my back that read, “convenient target?”

  A flash of heat ran from my chest, down my arms to my hands. The dry, acrid smell of burning paper curled up around my face and I realized it was my silk fan, singeing and smoking under the heat of my grip. Mr. Crenshaw’s nostrils flared wide. He glanced down at my hands. I found that I didn’t give a damn. Let him see. Let him know what I could do. I stepped forward, the heat in my hands building as I reached for the owl’s head cane.

  “Sebastian, I see that you’ve met my lovely niece,” a cool, elegant voice sounded at my shoulder. Mrs. Winter slipped her arm through mine, giving my wrist a comforting pat while moving my hands away from Mr. Crenshaw’s cane. Ivy followed close at her heels, an anxious expression on her face.

  “Actually, we haven’t been introduced,” Mr. Crenshaw intoned while ever so subtly releasing the hem of my skirt from the floor.

  “Pardon me, Cassandra, dear, this is Mr. Sebastian Crenshaw, a distant... very distant cousin of Mr. Winter’s. He is a member of the Coven Guild Inquiry Commission. Mr. Crenshaw, my niece, Cassandra Reed. She just began instruction at Miss Castwell’s.”

  And suddenly, I understood Ivy’s discomfort. The Inquiry Commission was the governing body for investigating “inappropriate” acts by Snipes and Guild Guardians alike. It wasn’t so much a law enforcement agency as an agency charged with investigating groups that could be considered subversive or potentially damaging to Coven Guild society. They had much more freedom than any branch of law enforcement, or government, for that matter. The Commission could pull people from their beds, in the middle of the night for questioning under “less than ideal” circumstances for an undetermined amount of time. If their targets were lucky, they would be dumped in the streets of the Capitol with no access to their magic for the next month. If they were unlucky, if they were found to be guilty of undermining the government, they would disappear. And their families would speak of them as if they were long-dead and not well-remembered.

  With her pat on the arm, Mrs. Winter was telling me to be cautious. One misplaced word in front of Mr. Crenshaw could mean disaster. I pasted on my best false smile and curtsied prettily, keeping my hands folded against my gown. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Crenshaw.”

  Mrs. Winter continued, “Still, even a novice student like herself recognizes an inappropriate introduction like this. I would hate for any of these girls to think a man could simply stomp up to them like a fishmonger and insist on their attention.”

  “Surely, with my connections to the school, a little leeway is granted,” Mr. Crenshaw insisted, glaring at me.

  “You’ll find that it is not granted,” Mrs. Winter said, her voice as cold as her name.

  Mr. Crenshaw looked supremely annoyed to be interrupted, and I couldn’t help but feel a little frisson of gratitude for Mrs. Winter’s timing. “Yes, well, I imagine that we will be spending a lot of time together over the next few years. We will be monitoring your handling of the Mother Book.”

  “I was under the impression that Cassandra would be under the supervision of the faculty of Miss Castwells, while she is performing her duties as Translator. I believe all previous Translators were granted a considerable measure of autonomy.”

  “Previous Translators were selected before the Restoration. There is more at stake now,” Mr. Crenshaw said, drawing himself to full height. “We must make sure that Miss Reed is taking her role as Translator seriously and acting in the best interests of society. Or certain measures will have to be taken.”

  From the menace in Mr. Crenshaw’s tone, I didn’t think those measures would include cookies and pats on my head.

  Mrs. Winter smiled, the warmth of it not quite reaching her eyes. “Oh, I’m sure Cassandra will exceed your expectations.”

  Mr. Crenshaw sniffed. “We’ll see about that. Enjoy yourselves, while you can.”

  Mr. Crenshaw gave a quick nod of the head and departed. Somehow, the world was still turning. The pleasant chatter of the party and clink of punch cups and china plates had continued all this time. No one had noticed the hostile exchange with Mr. Crenshaw or my attempts to incinerate my fan.

  “Please excus
e us, girls,” Mrs. Winter said breezily. “Alicia, it’s wonderful to see you looking so well. Ivy, dear, that color lace is very interesting.”

  Both girls curtsied and made themselves scarce. Mrs. Winter kept pleasant smile in place as she led me out to the front entrance. Owen had made himself scarce, by this point, and I envied him, so very much. Mrs. Winter signaled a Snipe footman to bring her carriage around and turned to brush imaginary lint from my sleeves.

  “You handled that well,” she said, now that the foyer was empty. “Horrible, puffed up little man. He’s a low-level toadie for the inquiry commission, at best. He can’t even open official lines of questioning. He can only suggest politely that his betters look into matters he finds suspicious. He’s only pressing you because Mr. Winter defeated him in a bid for the appropriations committee. He has delusions of grandeur.”

  “Aren’t he and Mr. Winter both descendants of House Mountfort?”

  “Crenshaw has always been jealous of Mr. Winter. Ever since they were boys. Don’t let him worry you, dear. But don’t let him corner you again, either. The less you speak to him, the better.”

  “He tried to,” I made a vague gesture toward my head and wiggled my fingers, as if trying to pantomime “he dangled a squid over my head.”

  Mrs. Winter might have rolled her eyes if she wasn’t above such unladylike gestures. “Ceremancy, at a school social. How gauche.”

  “It didn’t work. I only felt a little tickle in my brain.”

  My mentor looked vaguely impressed before returning her expression to its neutral norm and tucking a tendril of hair behind my ear. “You’re doing very well, dear. Just continue to do what you’re doing. I will say ‘hello’ to everyone at home,” she said as the carriage rolled up to the front of the building. “I’m sure they miss you. I’ll send the carriage tomorrow for your visit.”

  I was struck still while Mrs. Winter was handed into her elegant crayfire carriage. I hadn’t thought of my parents once since she’d arrived. I hadn’t given much thought to the visit home that weekend. I’d only thought of myself, my concerns, protecting my secret, building my new friendships. What did it say about me that I hadn’t thought about sending my family my love as Mrs. Winter was leaving? How could I trust Mrs. Winter’s kindness so easily when she’d been such an intimidating figure throughout my childhood? Why did my own mother’s efforts to protect me seem so clumsy and wrong by comparison? Was I foolish to feel confidence in Mrs. Winter?