Renegade Magic

by Burgis, Stephanie

  “Indeed,” Lady Fotherington said. She didn’t look away from me, but her smile deepened. “Miss Wingate has exactly mastered the realities of our little melodrama. Miss Katherine’s own mother was a liar and a social climber, and—”

  “She was not!” I said, and started up from the couch—

  Or, rather, that was what I meant to do. But without so much as a pause in her speech, Lady Fotherington flared her eyes, and power snapped into place around me, pressing down against my shoulders, stifling my tongue before I could utter a single word.

  “I say,” said Charles. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed unexpected movement, as he dropped his hand from his eyes and sat up almost straight. “You are speaking of our mother, you know.”

  “Indeed I am,” Lady Fotherington murmured. But she didn’t take her eyes from mine.

  It was too much, too absurd. I would have screamed with frustration if I could have. I’d been forced into silence and stillness by Lord Ravenscroft, but his power had been insurmountable, impossible to challenge. Lady Fotherington’s power was nothing compared to mine, this working was nothing I couldn’t break with a thought, a single explosion of righteous outrage—

  Oh. I met her gaze, and saw the calculating speculation there, mixed with pleasure.

  This was the real test now, and she’d been preparing for it the entire visit. Now was the moment when Mr. Gregson’s scheme would either succeed or fail forever … and the only way to save my magic was to let her do whatever she wanted to me, without fighting back.

  I stared at her with all the loathing I felt, and all the helplessness I felt too. For once in my life, I was completely unable to give in to my temper.

  Lady Fotherington nodded gently to me. “Katherine has inherited all her mother’s worst tendencies. This is not the first time she has lied to advance her family in Society. It is”—she slipped me another testing glance—“the only reason her oldest sister managed to entrap such an eligible husband—and were it not for my own assistance, her other sister would have entrapped Mrs. Edmund Carlyle’s only son this very year.”

  Power filled my skin, burning to be let out, to explode. I pushed it ruthlessly down, so not a trickle could escape and disrupt even a breath of Lady Fotherington’s working. I kept my chin held high and saw every nuance of satisfaction that passed across Lady Fotherington’s face as she savored my defeat.

  Someday, I promised myself. Someday, she will regret this. Someday …

  Then someone moved between us, breaking our mutual glare. It was Charles, of all people. He stepped in front of me like a living shield. For the first time in ages, I realized how broad his shoulders really were, when he wasn’t slumping or trying to disappear from the room.

  “Those,” he said, “are my sisters you’re speaking of, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  I wanted to cheer. Yet my eyes burned as though they wanted to weep. I hadn’t seen my older brother show so much spirit since Stepmama first sent him away to boarding school, years ago.

  Lady Fotherington only said lightly, “What a pity. You rather remind me of someone I used to know. He never measured up in the end, though, either.”

  “Cousin Margaret?” Mrs. Wingate snapped. “Do you have nothing to say to me?”

  Stepmama took a deep breath and stiffened her spine. “I cannot deny that Katherine misled you about her godmother’s identity, but as to the rest—”

  “I have heard enough!” Mrs. Wingate rose to her feet, trembling with outrage and gathering up her colorful shawls like a peacock extending full plumage. “I took you all into my home! I offered you friendship and patronage despite my own daughter’s best advice! I introduced you to my friends! I—”

  “Perhaps it is time for me to take my leave,” Lady Fotherington murmured.

  “Yes,” Charles said. For the first time in my memory, his voice actually sounded menacing. “I think you should leave, Lady Fotherington. Now.”

  “Really!” said Mrs. Wingate. “Of all the rude and ungracious behavior—”

  “Oh, you need not trouble yourself to defend me from any of the Stephensons, ma’am,” said Lady Fotherington. She set down her cup and brushed off her slim hands. “Indeed, I should not like to intrude at all on such a private family discussion. Mrs. Wingate, Miss Wingate … Mrs. Stephenson … Mr. Stephenson …” She sighed as her gaze brushed across Charles. “Yes, far too familiar. Good-bye.” She walked out of the room at an unhurried pace, stopping only at the door to look back at all of us.

  The power that held me disappeared as she released her working. I fell forward and nearly landed on the carpet. Charles grabbed my arm to steady me.

  I drew a deep breath, my eyes on Lady Fotherington’s elegant figure. There had to be something I could say—some perfect, sardonic line I could toss off that would cut her to the quick and show Mrs. Wingate exactly where the blame truly lay. …

  “Oh, and Mrs. Wingate?” Lady Fotherington said. The footman was already holding the door open for her; one dainty foot was poised to step into the corridor outside. “I just thought perhaps you ought to know … after all the confusing stories of this morning’s catastrophes …”

  “Yes, Lady Fotherington?” Weaving slightly, Mrs. Wingate grasped hold of the couch arm beside her for support.

  “Miss Angeline Stephenson is quite an unrepentant witch,” said Lady Fotherington. “She and Miss Katherine were indubitably to blame.”

  The door closed gently behind her.

  Twenty-Two

  After that, of course, there wasn’t any question about what would happen next.

  I had to pack for Angeline as well as myself, as she still hadn’t come back. Lucky Angeline. If there was one small grain of relief left to me, it was that at least Stepmama and Papa were lodged on a different floor of the Wingates’ townhouse. That meant I had at least half an hour’s respite before I had to face Stepmama in private.

  The crash of my door slamming open made me jump and drop the pile of gowns I’d been cramming willy-nilly into a crowded valise. I swung around, prepared for almost anything: Maria, come to gloat; Stepmama, too furious to pack before her rant; Lord Ravenscroft, knowing the truth about my “pacification” and come to complete the job himself …

  What I saw, instead, was Lucy, her face pale and her hair floating around her in wild disorder.

  “You’re awake!” I said. “How are you feeling?”

  Lucy’s voice came out as a muffled shriek. “Tell me what is going on!” She pushed the door shut behind her and flattened herself against it, staring at me. “I woke up in my own bed, and everyone was screaming at everyone else, and you”—she waved at the mass of piled clothing on my bed—“you’re packing!” She sounded on the verge of hysteria. “I don’t even know how I got here or what’s happening to me!” She ended with a wail as she sank down to the floor and covered her eyes with her hands. The cabinets in the room all rattled ominously in reaction.

  I abandoned the packing and hurried over to her. Lucy might be a devotee of melodrama, but this time, she was fully justified. It was too much to cope with on her own—and like it or not, I was going to have to leave her alone with it all too soon.

  “Do you remember anything that happened in the Baths?”

  Sniffling softly, she let me help her to her feet and draw her over to sit on the edge of the bed. “I remember feeling strange, as if I was floating outside myself, above the water. But then—then something else filled me up. Something that wasn’t me. It was terrible and wonderful and horrifying and—and I could see you, but I couldn’t call to you, or—”

  As she spoke, the pictures on the walls knocked so wildly against the flowered wallpaper that two of them wrenched themselves free of their mounts and crashed facedown onto the floor in front of us. With a sob, Lucy broke off and buried her face in her hands. “I’m a monster!”

  “No, you are not,” I said. “Don’t be absurd.”

  The drawers in the chest of drawers jerked themselves i
n and out as she sobbed, and I stifled a groan. No doubt Mrs. Wingate would assume I’d thrown a temper tantrum and wrecked the room intentionally on my way out.

  Still, there was nothing to be solved by worrying about that now. “You are not a monster,” I said firmly. “You’ve been possessed by wild magic, which is not your fault.”

  “Possessed by—what?” She lowered her hands and blinked out at me tearfully.

  “Wild magic,” I said. “Those fools we saw in the King’s Bath last night raised the magic without realizing it, and it came speeding up out of the Source looking for a host. You were the most helpless one there, so it chose you. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “To anyone!” She stared at me, her cheeks flushing pink. “But—”

  “Anyone without magic of their own,” I corrected myself. “Mr. Gregson and I could both defend ourselves, so …”

  She swallowed visibly. “Are you trying to tell me that despite everything that’s happened today, even despite that”—she pointed to the wildly rocking drawers and the rattling pictures on the wall—“I am not a witch?”

  “No!” I said. “Of course you’re not.” I blew out a sigh of sheer relief. “Is that what you were worried about this whole time? That you’d turned into one of the villainesses from those novels you read? I’m so sorry—I should have explained before. No witch would ever have let that happen to herself.”

  “Well, of all the unfair things in the world!” Lucy stamped her foot, the last of her tears drying up completely. “You would think that at least there’d be some benefit to all this!”

  “Um …” I blinked. She still looked like herself, and yet … “I don’t understand. You do know witches are scandalous and completely banned from good Society and—”

  “Well, of course I know all that.” She waved her hand impatiently. “But that’s going to happen to me anyway, now that everyone saw me in the Baths. I thought at least I’d have some interesting new powers to make up for it.”

  “Oh.” I did my best to digest that. “Well …” I glanced from her furiously impatient expression to the rattling pictures on the wall. “Not even your mother can ignore how you feel anymore … at least, not until this is fixed,” I offered.

  She growled deep in her throat. One of the drawers in the chest of drawers wrenched itself free and shot across the room, slamming into the far wall.

  I added hastily, “When Sulis Minerva took over your body today, you did amazing things. You—you even gave Charles good luck at the gaming tables. I didn’t think that was possible!”

  The pictures slowed in their rattling, but Lucy only shook her head. “Sulis who?”

  Before I could answer, an all-too-familiar knock sounded on the door. Dash it. “I’ll explain it later,” I promised. “Somehow. But in the meantime, stay away from the Baths! I’m hoping this will all wear off eventually, but—”

  “Katherine!” The door opened, and Stepmama stalked in. “The amount of noise that has been coming from this room—oh. I see. Miss Lucy.” She looked from Lucy’s flushed and tearstained face to the expensive pictures lying facedown on the floor and the drawer lying skewed against the far wall.

  Lucy’s shoulders hunched even tighter together in reaction, and the tall cabinet in the corner of the room gave a tentative jiggle. Stepmama sighed.

  “I am pleased to see you awake,” she said. “But shouldn’t you be resting?”

  “I—”

  “She came to say good-bye,” I said.

  “How kind of her.” Stepmama gave Lucy a polite smile and me a narrow-eyed look. “However, as you are still less than half packed, and our hired carriage is already waiting at the door—”

  “What about Angeline?” I said. “We can’t leave without her.”

  “Angeline …,” Stepmama began.

  But my mind had already leaped ahead. “We can’t!” I said. “And I won’t.” I stood up to glare at her. “I will not leave Bath without her, no matter what she’s done or what stupid threats you made to her before we came. She’s still my sister, and I will not let you—”

  “Katherine!” Stepmama’s voice rapped out with all the authority of a hundred Guardians. “If you will stop gibbering for a moment!” She glared back at me. “What I was going to say, before you interrupted me, was that Angeline will find our address waiting for her with the butler whenever she finally deigns to return. We, meanwhile, shall retire to a respectable coaching inn for the rest of the day and spend the night there before we leave Bath.”

  “So we’re not leaving her behind?”

  “Not yet.” Stepmama bit off the words like bullets. “Not until I have spoken to Angeline myself and had the opportunity to weigh all sides of this morning’s story.”

  Oh, Lord, I thought. I said, “About this morning …”

  “You and I will be discussing that matter at great length, and in detail. Later.” Stepmama opened the bedroom door. “Come, Miss Lucy. You should be resting, and Kat”—she gave me a Look—“should be packing.”

  “Oh.” Lucy stood up obediently, twisting her hands together. “Yes, of course. I—Kat …”

  I met her desperate gaze and winced. There was nothing I could safely say in front of Stepmama. “Good-bye,” I said.

  Her lips quivered. A third painting flung itself off the wall and crashed to the floor. Stepmama winced.

  “Good-bye,” Lucy whispered, and fled.

  We arrived at the Pelican Inn a half hour later. It hadn’t been pleasant to make our way out to the hired carriage through the whispering, tittering crowd of promenaders outside Mrs. Wingate’s house, but the knowledge that Maria Wingate was watching our progress from an upper window kept my spine as rigid and my head as high as any grand lady.

  This hired carriage could never have passed for fashionable; the paint was peeling and the driver looked sullen. I imagined I was Angeline and stepped into it like a princess on her way to the opera.

  Once we were at the inn, though, and I’d sat through the expected hour of ranting from Stepmama, there was nothing left for me to do but pace and worry.

  Stepmama had ordered me not to leave the tiny fifth-floor bedroom I was meant to be sharing with Angeline, on threat of dire punishments. It was barely ten feet in length and six in width, and it felt as if it teetered as high as the clouds above the street below—and above everything that was happening in Bath, without me. I paced the little rectangle until I thought I would go mad, while the busy inn yard below bustled with real action and movement.

  The day advanced, inexorably. Somewhere outside, Mr. Gregson was handing Mama’s mirror to Lord Ravenscroft, and Lady Fotherington was smirking over it. Lucy was alone, battered by wild magic and her family’s outrage. And Angeline … who knew where she was now? Still walking off her rage on the streets of Bath, even as the sky darkened? Or—even worse—coming up with a new and even more disastrous scheme? Either way, she should have been back by now.

  I moved back to the window, pushing my nose against the dirty glass and searching for her in the gathering darkness. The inn yard was still crowded with men yelling back and forth and carriages rattling in and out of the yard. Boys shouted out advertisements for nearby boxing matches, colorfully dressed women pressed up against the new arrivals, and—

  Oh. My breath stopped for a moment as I glimpsed a familiar figure weaving through the crowd toward the inn’s front entrance.

  I flew out of the room, ignoring all of Stepmama’s strictures. A minute later, as I hurtled down the very last flight of stairs, I met the inn’s maid just about to start up the stairway.

  Her eyes widened, and she dropped a quick curtsy as she recognized me. “Pardon me, miss, but there’s a gentleman come—”

  “I know,” I said. “You needn’t bother to tell my parents. They’ve sent me down to talk to him myself.”

  Her eyebrows rose.

  I added hastily, “He’s my cousin, here to—ah—escort me to my school tomorrow.”

  She sh
rugged, a gesture that would have sent Stepmama into a frenzy of irritation. “As you say, miss. He’s taken a private parlor. It’s just this way. …”

  I followed her through the inn, sighing with relief. The last thing I could afford, if I was ever to sort this tangle out, was an audience.

  She ushered me into the dimly lit private parlor a moment later. It was lined in dark brown wallpaper and full of ancient-looking, fraying couches and chairs. She curtsied and left the two of us alone, leaving the door open the three inches that propriety demanded.

  This was no time for propriety. I pushed the door firmly shut and strode across the room to join my visitor by the miniscule fire. He stood with one hand braced against the stone mantelpiece. Shadows flickered across his strained face.

  “Thank goodness,” I said. “You didn’t bring your mother.”

  Frederick Carlyle’s lips twisted. “If my mother knew I was here …” He looked pale and grim, with none of the wit and easy humor I was used to seeing on his handsome face. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t care anymore. Kat, I have to see Angeline.”

  “I know,” I said, “but she isn’t here.”

  “Not here?” He frowned. “The Wingates’ butler said you’d all removed here. Surely—”

  “She’s on her way,” I said, and hoped that I was telling the truth. “But we should talk first.”

  “Talk,” Mr. Carlyle repeated. He let out a laugh that held no humor. “Yes. Indeed. There certainly is plenty for us to talk about, isn’t there?” His right hand tightened around the rough stone of the mantelpiece until I cringed in sympathetic pain. “You were there, Kat. You saw …”

  He raked his free hand through his thick blond hair and let out a huff of breath. “I thought once I resolved matters with my mother, everything would be fine. I never imagined … I knew your stepmother would exert pressure upon her, but I never dreamed Angeline would actually give in to it!”

  “I wouldn’t say she’s given in, exactly—”