A Breath of Frost Read online

  Horrified, Emma turned to the footman. “How do we stop him?” He just shook his head, pale as boiled leeks.

  The rain fell harder, making everything dark and hazy. The cobblestones turned to ink, the stone pillars to gray shadows. Emma tried to push the wind between the gruesome horseman as he bore down on his next victim: a gentleman leaning out of his carriage window, his beaver hat snatched away by the whirling storm. He squinted into the rain, confused.

  Emma shoved more magic into the weather. Lightning struck a lamppost. The wind tore at the dullahan’s ragged cloak but it didn’t stop his progress. His eyes pinned her through the sheets of rain. “It’s not working,” she said, shivering down to her very marrow.

  “What do we do?” Gretchen turned on the footman. He looked ill. He didn’t answer, didn’t even blink when she shook his shoulder. He was too intent on the dullahan. Gretchen slapped the footman as hard as she could. His head hit the stones behind him. He blinked at her, no longer shaking. “How do we stop him?” Gretchen repeated.

  “Gold,” he croaked, shocked out of his panic. “They can’t abide gold of any kind.”

  Gretchen looked taken aback for a brief moment before she and her cousins leaped upon Godric. “Oi,” he said as they batted at him. Gretchen slipped his gold cravat pin free and darted forward to fling it at the dullahan. The pin scratched his leg, singeing his pants. The smell of scorched flesh touched the rain.

  Penelope fumbled for Godric’s gold cuff links and Emma dashed into the snuff shop behind them. Snuffboxes lined the shelves: enameled, bronzed, silver, and painted mahogany. The proprietor stared at Emma, unused to female clients, and certainly unused to having them paw through his merchandise. She grabbed all the gold-accented snuffboxes she could see and hurried back outside while he hollered for her to stop. Gretchen had liberated gold candlesticks from a coffeehouse. They stood beside one another, throwing their arsenal at the enraged dullahan.

  The gold infuriated him, searing his hair and hands, and his horse. The burns were violent, acting like poison more than simply painful welts. His eyes rolled in his head, dark and malevolent.

  Cuffs fluttering, Godric liberated a sturdy cane from a passing gentleman and used it to hack at the bone-whip as it lashed at his cousins. The rain shielded them from most of the onlookers, who only wondered if some prank was afoot. They had yet to notice the dead coachman. His terrified spirit was pinned to the dullahan’s saddle with a rope made of violet light.

  The horseman thundered toward the cousins, cobblestones cracking under the force of his horse’s hooves. Gretchen ducked under her brother’s cane and the savage whip, brandishing the last gold candlestick like a sword. She aimed for his eyes and he screamed. The sound was so vicious and inhuman that several people fainted, without knowing what it was they had just heard. The dullahan turned his horse around and galloped away, dragging the poor coachman’s spirit behind him.

  The rain lightened. The horses calmed. The cousins stared at one another. Emma shook her head.

  “And to think I wanted to leave the school.”

  Chapter 31

  Emma waited until everyone was asleep. There was a Keeper posted in the garden but he was there to worry about outside threats, not what was going on inside. And technically, Emma wasn’t sure she was even breaking any rules. It was probably frowned upon to be out of her room after hours, but there was nothing in the rule book about it specifically. It wasn’t her fault if those pages had inexplicably disappeared. And after facing a dullahan, everything else seemed a minor infraction.

  She moved carefully down the hall. The teachers had long since retired and the few fires burning in the grates were crumbling to embers. She made it down the stairs without incident, but had to dive into a potted plant when Mrs. Sparrow’s cat-familiar prowled toward the kitchen. She waited until the glowing swish of his tail had faded before climbing out of the dusty ferns and darting into the library. Most girls would sneak out to meet a handsome lad. Emma just wanted books.

  She didn’t know how else to get information on her mother. Lady Theodora hadn’t attended Rowanstone since it had closed briefly when the Sisters were at their worst, but her defection from the witching society and her defiance of the rules was legendary. Surely someone somewhere had jotted down a few notes.

  The library was extensive and immaculately kept. There were two stories of leather-bound books and folios, with a curving wooden staircase leading to a balcony that ran around the second floor. Rowan branches curved around the railing, with perfect slender leaves and tiny red berries of garnets. There was a large fireplace, several benches, and wide tables for studying. Bell jars and the glass doors of cabinets protected collections of amulets, crystals, and ancient grimoires from fingerprints and coal dust.

  She went straight to the second floor, where there were locked doors and the journals of famous witching families. She found a small section on a bottom shelf with three Lovegrove journals. The first was written by Egremont Lovegrove, who had spent all of his time cataloguing the fungi of Berkshire in great and tedious detail. She didn’t notice he was born two hundred years before her mother until she was half asleep over a description of ruined mushrooms. He’d even met Anne Boleyn and all he could talk about was the fact that she’d accidentally trod on a collection of toadstools he was keen to study.

  The second journal was no more helpful, but at least it was exciting. Oona Lovegrove had dressed as a boy and snuck onto a ship to sail around looking for pirates, before turning into a pirate herself. She was a wind-witch, like Emma. Oona lived to be a hundred and three and mentioned the birth of her great-grandnieces Cora, Theodora, and Bethany, but she died before she ever met them. She did mention that Emma’s grandfather was a Keeper, but that was all.

  The third journal was written entirely in Latin. Upside down. And backward.

  Emma skimmed for any mention of Theodora or Ewan but only got a headache behind her right eye for her troubles. She decided that since her own family was proving to be so vexingly enigmatic, she’d simply have to look elsewhere. She made a satisfying large pile of books on one of the tables and lit one of the oil lamps. There were worse ways to spend a few sleepless hours. For one thing, she could be sneezing in the bushes with her teeth chattering from cold like the Keeper outside.

  She looked for mention of witch bottles and the Lacrimarium Cormac had told her about. Their spells required a great deal of time and concentration and the bottle had to be prepared under certain phases of the moon. Families of the Lacrimarium disowned them with elaborate unbinding rituals. Witch or warlock, no one wanted to be vulnerable to the bottle spell. Smaller traps were set by regular witches, if they could get the hair or blood of their victim, but the Lacrimarium needed no such thing. They didn’t even need threshold days, which were times of power like solstices or May Day and midnight. And they didn’t suffer the dangerous repercussions of being drained, blocked, or running mad. But they were rare and temperamental.

  And none of them had a thing to say about Emma’s mother.

  Frustrated, she took her oil lamp and wandered through the library again, looking for hidden books or locked shelves. She didn’t find either, but she did find the Witch’s Debrett’s. As expected, there were no Days listed but she found an impressive section on the Lovegroves. Her mother was listed, as were her aunts, along with their familiars. Theodora had claimed a red bird for her magical creature.

  On the shelf below, Emma noticed large, thick leather-bound journals without titles. The only marking on the spines were dates in gilt paint. Out of curiosity, she reached for the year of her mother’s birth: 1780.

  The cream-colored pages were covered in simple faded ink, noting births, deaths, marriages, and other important magical events all over Britain. According to the records, a three-headed calf was born in Scotland who produced healing milk. In Cornwall, a mermaid was spotted off Land’s End whose hair gave water-witches the ability to breathe underwater. And there, in April: Theodora Ophe
lia Lovegrove was born to George Lovegrove, the Earl of Whickam, and his wife Marianne Lovegrove, Countess Whickam.

  Emma reached for the volume marked 1797. As far as she’d been able to infer, her mother was perfectly sane until after she’d given birth to Emma. It gave her a jolt to see her own name and birthday written in the precise handwriting: the seventh day of January, Emma Jane Day, born to Alphonse Day, heir to the Earl of Hightower and his wife, Lady Theodora Ophelia Day. It was faded more than any of the other writing, but still faintly legible, if she squinted hard enough.

  She went back nine months, to when her parents were married and she was conceived. She didn’t recognize any names until the end of August. Theodora Ophelia Day was faded even more than Emma’s birth announcement had been, until it looked as though it was written in milk. Whatever else was recorded after her name was now gone entirely. The ink had faded away so that even when Emma held the oil light behind the thin parchment, she couldn’t make out the haziest trace of what had been written.

  Burning with curiosity, Emma checked every entry for 1796 and 1797 but couldn’t find anything remotely enlightening. She finally put the books away and climbed down the stairs, chewing on her lower lip. She felt as though she was on the verge of discovering a new constellation, if only she could connect the stars together in their proper shape. At the moment she was confronted with a chaotic sky with no story to tell.

  Also, very cold toes.

  Rowanstone Academy was decidedly chilly once the fires went out in the grates. She slipped out of the library to seek the warmth of her own bed, and crashed right into another student. They both squeaked in alarm and Emma’s lamp dipped dangerously low, nearly falling out of her grasp. The light slanted.

  Sophie was pressed against the wall, her hand on her heart. She looked vaguely guilty. “You scared me to death.”

  “Likewise,” Emma said through the beat of her pulse hammering in her throat.

  “I thought you were Mrs. Sparrow.” Sophie paused. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I was in the library,” she replied, also pausing. The door to the apothecary pantry was half-open behind her. The room inside had herbs and oils, jars filled with stones, ash, and water labeled with river names, huge barrels of salt, rope, and thread in every color, feathers, butterfly wings, dried rowan berries, and several strange things lurking in glass bottles. It was a witch’s pantry, filled with ingredients for spells and charms. “Isn’t that usually locked?”

  Sophie glanced away. “Yes.” When Emma just waited, she sighed. “I needed a few items.” She pulled her other hand from behind her back. Emma’s lamplight fell across a basket filled with toffees, salves in enameled boxes, and candied rose petals. From Sophie’s red cheeks she’d expected stranger things, bat wings perhaps, or the eyes of toads. Two things, it should be said, she sincerely hoped never to have to touch. “We’ve gathered in the yellow parlor. Why don’t you join us?”

  Emma followed Sophie up the stairs, the wooden floorboards creaking under their slippers. The yellow parlor was a small, rarely used room tucked away at the end of the hall, near the servant stairs. It was also the farthest from any of the teachers’ bedrooms. And it was filled with girls, some in nightgowns and others in ball gowns. She knew only a few of them by name. They were sitting around Jane Callendish, who was slumped on a settee under layers of shawls and wet handkerchiefs. She looked as though she’d been crying for hours. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and the tip of her nose was red.

  Daphne was the first to notice Emma. She, of course, was wearing a white silk gown trimmed with silver beads. Sapphires glittered in her hair. “What’s she doing here?”

  “I invited her,” Sophie replied with her gentle smile, setting the basket on a side table. “We ran into each other in the hall. Quite literally.”

  “I’m not convinced we can trust her. She’s a Lovegrove, after all,” Daphne said. “And everyone knows their magic doesn’t work quite right.”

  “Oh, Daphne.” Sophie winced. “Don’t be rude.”

  “Let her stay,” Jane sniffled. “I need all the magic I can get.”

  “Jane’s father sent word earlier this evening that he’s officially signed her betrothal contract to Charles Fulcrum,” Sophie explained as Emma sat on the rug, tucking her toes under the hem of her nightdress. Someone’s familiar, a tiny burrowing owl, hopped across the rug to stare at her.

  “And you don’t care for him?” She hazarded a guess, considering the state of Jane’s handkerchief and the piles of half-eaten sweets in front of her.

  “I don’t know!” Jane wailed. “I’ve never even met him!” Her blond hair was damp on her cheeks. She ate another handful of toffees. “My life is over!”

  “I think you’re lucky.” Lilybeth fluttered. “Your Season has barely begun and you’ve already had an offer of marriage! My oldest sister had four Seasons and not a single offer. She’s twenty-two now and my mother’s given up hope for her altogether.”

  Emma remembered her Aunt Mildred’s incensed speech about being unmarried and dependent on her brother’s goodwill. Was it any better to be dependent on a stranger one’s parents had picked out? A husband controlled his wife’s property, her access to her own dowry, and even what she could buy in the shops if he wished it. Emma shifted uncomfortably. Her own father would be hoping to do exactly as Jane’s had.

  “My parents knew each other for years,” Catriona said. “And my mother still throws the dinner plates at his head.” She shrugged. “Anyway, you won’t die at his hand.” The girls sitting around her edged away. She just smiled benignly and helped herself to one of the stolen cakes.

  “She’s right,” someone else said. “There are no guarantees either way.”

  “And would you rather become an ape leader?” Lilybeth shuddered.

  “I don’t like that term.” Another student frowned at her. “We shouldn’t call one another names.”

  Daphne rolled her eyes. “Spinster then, whatever. The reality is the same. Women who don’t get married are ridiculed and pitied, unless they have wealth or power.” Her expression hardened. “And I have no intention of being pitied.”

  Lilybeth shook her head. “I want to get married.”

  Jane wept harder. Sophie patted her shoulder. “Let’s begin the ceremony,” she suggested. “It will make you feel better.”

  “What ceremony?” Emma asked as the other girls slid off their seats to sit cross-legged on the floor.

  “There’s a secret tradition for girls about to be married,” Sophie explained as she helped Jane sit on an embroidered cushion in the center of the circle. “Rose-petal candies for beauty, and other little charms to help her in her new life.”

  “So she’ll know true love,” one of the girls sighed. “The rose petals will make certain Charles finds her the most beautiful of all. It’s so romantic.”

  “It’s about power,” Daphne said firmly. “Just as I said before.”

  The ritual was simple but it seemed to give Jane comfort. The air smelled like sugar and beeswax and the candlelight was so soft it looked like honey. Lilybeth smeared rose oil on Jane’s forehead and hands, saying, “So that Charles always looks on you and smiles.”

  Sophie fed her a spoonful of honey. “So he speaks of you sweetly.”

  Daphne held up a small hand mirror painted with an image of Artemis holding a bow with a nocked arrow. “So that you remember who you are,” Daphne said. Jane looked at her own reflection silently.

  “Did you bring the portrait?” Daphne asked.

  Jane pulled the gold chain she wore over her head, revealing the small cameo on the end. “I had that strange old man at the goblin markets carve it for me last month when my father first brought up the possibility of Charles Fulcrum.”

  “Good,” Daphne approved. “My father says his work is uncanny.”

  Jane ran her thumb over the cameo. The white shell gleamed on a smooth background painted red. Charles had a long nose, tousled hair,
and a shy smile, if the carving was anything to go on. “I suppose he’s handsome enough. I might grow to love him, if he’s kind.”

  “He’ll be kind,” Daphne said forcefully. “We’ll make sure of it.”

  Emma watched as Jane pulled a hair from her head and wrapped it tightly around the cameo. She added a length of red thread. “She’ll soak it in honey and bury it under a rosebush,” Sophie whispered to her. “It’s supposed to ensure that she has a happy marriage.”

  “We have little enough say over our own lives,” Daphne pointed out, as if she thought Emma would protest. “And even less once we become wives. This way, at least, we can protect ourselves, just a little bit.”

  The strangest part of the evening so far was that she actually agreed with Daphne on something. Gretchen would fly into a black mood if she ever found out.

  “Is it time yet?” Lilybeth asked in a breathless voice, as though she’d been patiently waiting for a Christmas present.

  Jane wiped the salt from her tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I suppose so.”

  The silence the girls had held during the small ceremony shattered. They whispered and giggled and shifted excitedly. “Now what’s happening?” Emma asked Sophie uneasily. She wasn’t used to so many girls in the first place, never mind when they all giggled together. It was slightly disconcerting.

  “They say a woman on her betrothal night and on the night before her wedding is especially able to predict the future husbands of unmarried girls.”

  The other students painstakingly wrote names on scraps of parchment and folded them up. They were dropped onto a silver tray, the kind butlers used to bring the calling cards of visitors to the lady of the house. Everyone stood up. Emma did the same, feeling decidedly nervous.