Dancing and Disaster: 19

My errand was of a peculiar nature. It related to employing my Merlin magick at Home, in ways that hadn’t occurred to me to do before. Ophelia had only loaned me that power, but she had made no move to take it back, yet. We’d agreed on a week, so I had time.

And I had questions. Lots of them. I’d had questions ever since I had joined the Society, of course; everyone did. But I’d learned a lot since then, and I finally had an idea about the nature of our Home and how it worked.

And that being so, I was curious, so I had to test it. Right? Who could possibly resist temptation like that?

It couldn’t be done just anywhere, though. I made my way, slowly and uncertainly, through the winding corridors of our beloved and enormous House, and after wrong turns aplenty (even superpowered, I still have to be me), I found myself at the door to House’s favourite room.

I knocked.

‘Dear House. I know it is a trifle rude to arrive uninvited and unannounced, but this is important. Would you be so kind as to let me in?’

Silence.

Then, a click. The door had unlocked.

I turned the handle, and went in.

The room stood quiet and empty. I closed the door behind me, and took a seat on one of the upholstered ivory chairs. A fire flared to life in the grate, and a comforting warmth began to permeate the October chill in the air.

I sat in comfortable silence for a while, enjoying the ambience of the parlour. The grandfather clock tick-tocked to itself in the corner, a peaceful sound, and I began to relax.

The portrait of the troll lady in court dress was still there, above the chair Emellana had lately occupied. I studied it more closely than I’d had occasion to do before. She was of Emellana’s age, I judged: fairly elderly, but still spry. Her gown was an extravagant blue velvet creation, seventeenth-century in style, with a wealth of lace and ruffles and jewels. She was a court lady, no doubt about it. But: which court?

I looked around at the rest of the paintings. There were five more: two depicting figures in seventeenth-century dress, one male, black and Yllanfalen, one female, white and human. Another showed a young man with dark brown skin wearing the plain garb of an eighteenth-century tradesman. The final two depicted a little girl in a plain white Edwardian dress, and an elderly, blue-eyed lady in an eighteen-thirties day dress and sun bonnet.

The child’s portrait didn’t fit my theory, but the rest just might. My gaze lingered in particular on the older lady in the sun bonnet.

I closed my eyes. Time to listen; time to feel. I’d connected with the odd, old house at Silvessen in deeper ways than I’d ever connected with anything before; could I do the same at Home?

I sat there enveloped in near silence, breathing deeply, listening to every slight sound that reached my senses. The tick, tick of the clock. The soft crackle of flames in the hearth. I breathed in the dust of hundreds of years with every inhalation; I felt the softness of carpet under my feet and silk under my hands, a cold wind in my eaves, the chatter of birds sheltering from the weather somewhere under my roof. A comfortable babble of voices, the warmth of many bodies gathered under my embrace. The odd cocktail of smells from the kitchens, from the lab, from the surrounding woods and fields.

A knock came softly from somewhere; a door opened in response, and closed again. Not the parlour. Somewhere farther off.

I gathered my strength, and pushed gently against the door that had just closed.

It opened again.

Sorry,’ I gasped, surprised, and retreated, slamming the door behind myself again.

There was a pause.

Hello?’ I said into the silence.

I felt a palpable surprise exceeding even my own. Then a questing, curious touch on my senses, all my senses: they were exploring me.

I come in peace,’ I offered. ‘I’m just— interested. In who you are.’

An answer came, finally. Merlin, uttered a voice in the depths of my mind. It has been a long time.

‘I’m only a new Merlin,’ I explained. ‘Brand new. I’ve been here at the Society for a while, though.’

We know you, Cordelia Vesper.

We. That tallied with my suspicions.

I felt a rising excitement, and had to take a breath. Focus, Ves. Don’t get overexcited and ruin everything. ‘May I know who I am addressing? Are these your portraits?’

The faces we once wore are here commemorated, answered the voice. They are but echoes, now.

‘Memories,’ I supplied.

Yes.

Time for the million-pound question.

‘You recognise me as Merlin. Is that because you are archetypes, too?’

A fresh wave of surprise. Not now, came the answer.

‘Former archetypes. And when you passed on the role, and passed away, you chose to remain here.’

Not all of us chose to remain. Some journeyed on.

I felt thrilled, the delight you get from solving a fiendishly difficult puzzle. For more than a decade, I’d wondered how House came to be so — animated. Everyone had. And now I finally had something like an answer.

The spirits of former archetypes resided here. They were haunting the House, after a fashion; the way the Greyer sisters had haunted their cottage after death, and the way the Yllanfalen women of Silvessen haunted the craggy old house on the edge of the town. Except, not like that. They didn’t linger out of bitterness and rage, and they hadn’t been enslaved. They were here because they had loved the House in life, and they chose to remain with it after death.

I thought of the painting of Cicily Werewode, the way some part of her spirit was bound into it. Probably some part of those arts was employed here, too. The people depicted were dead, and yet they weren’t; they lived on, their consciousness laced through canvas and oils, through brick and stone and tile. Bound to the House, and to each other, but bound in love, not hatred.

‘Greetings,’ I said brightly. ‘It’s an honour to meet you. Which archetype did you embody, if I may ask? Were you all the same archetype, at different times? Or different ones? Is it the same one Milady currently embodies?’

Too many questions. I knew it as I uttered them, but they poured out of me anyway. I was just so interested, and Milady was so maddeningly vague.

I felt a flicker of something like amusement. More than just a flicker. A wave of it, coming from everywhere at once.

So much curiosity, said a voice, and it felt like a different person speaking. An enquiring mind.

I hoped I wasn’t imagining the approval that came with the statement.

I have more,’ I offered. ‘Lots more.’

There followed a pause. Were they thinking? Don’t think, I silently pleaded. Just answer!

The next voice, though, was very recognisable to me. It sliced through my thoughts with enough force to give me a blinding headache. Ves. Leave this alone.

Milady.

Curses.

I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, and not altogether sincerely. ‘Can’t I ask?’

It is rude to pry, came Milady’s somewhat flabbergasting answer. Kindly remember your manners.

My manners?

I ground my teeth in silent frustration. I could see her point, more than I liked. I was poking and prying, trying to find my way through to secrets about Milady’s identity which she hadn’t chosen to share. I did not have that right.

Even so, it was maddeningly frustrating to have to leave it alone and back away. I was so close to solving the mystery!

I know, Ves, said Milady. It is very disappointing. But I remain unmoved.

I sighed, and relinquished the argument. I withdrew my senses from the dear old House, returning to the Ves I’d left behind: a pint-sized human with fabulous hair, slumped in an ivory silken chair. My limbs had gone dead in my absence; I shook life back into them, and took some care as I stood up.

I made a curtsey, to Milady and also to the various souls inhabiting the House. ‘Thank you for your time,’ I said, scrupulously polite. ‘I’ll show myself out.’

The door didn’t quite slam shut behind me, but it did lock in a manner I’d term decisive.

I wouldn’t be getting back into House’s favourite room any time soon.

***

My last errand for the day was of a less pleasant nature. As if bearing Milady’s disapproval (twice over) wasn’t enough, I was going to have to put up with my mother’s, too.

Oh well. I’d dropped myself in it, and had nobody else to blame.

I trailed back to my room, and picked up my phone.

Taking a deep breath, I dialled my mother’s number.

She picked up after the first ring, taking me by surprise. Normally she ignores my calls. ‘Cordelia. What do you want?’

‘Can’t I be calling just to say hel—’

‘Don’t bother. Get on with it.’

‘Right. Fair cop. I’ve got a problem.’

‘And?’

‘Well, to be accurate I’ve created a problem.’

‘And now you’re making it my problem.’

‘Sort of. A little bit. Are you disposed to help me or not?’

‘Depends what it is.’

So I launched into the Tale of the Dance Battle yet again, though I offered Mother a somewhat curtailed version.

Despite this, the silence when I’d finished was liberally flavoured with incredulity.

‘Yes, I know, I’m a complete screw-up,’ I said, before she could have a chance to say it herself.

‘Did it work?’

‘Well, it did. More or less.’

‘Then it wasn’t a screw-up, was it?’

‘Are you being supportive? Because I’m not sure I can take any more surprises today.’

‘Did we get to the part where you tell me what you want yet?’

‘Right. So Silvessen was probably an Yllanfalen town, and if we’re going to rebuild it sensitively then we need Yllanfalen aid.’

‘That can probably be arranged.’

‘And materials. Lots of those.’

That gave her pause. ‘I can’t just spirit up sufficient building materials to reconstruct an entire town, Ves.’

‘I know, but I’m stuck, so whatever you’ve got I’ll take.’

‘Noted. Oh, call your father.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Because it’s his birthday tomorrow.’

‘Right. I know stuff like that, of course, because I’ve had a long and rewarding relationship with him up until now.’

‘Also, he’s a stonemason.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Did you not hear me, or are you just being difficult?’

A stonemason. Whose birthday was tomorrow. I realised afresh how little I knew about my father. ‘I don’t have his number,’ I said.

‘I’ll send it. Tell him I told him to help you.’

‘Will that work?’

‘It will if he knows what’s good for him.’

She hung up.

A moment later, my phone buzzed with a message. Dad’s number unfurled across my screen.

All of this was rather unexpected. I took my time over saving his number to my contacts, and adding his name. Thomas Goldwell. Tom.

I was procrastinating, probably because I was nervous. He hadn’t seemed super pleased to learn of my existence before, and though I had given him my number the one time I’d met him, he had yet to call me.

That suggested he didn’t want anything to do with me, didn’t it?

Still. I wasn’t calling him to propose a happy family gathering. I was calling him to engage his professional services for Silvessen. Mostly.

The phone rang several times before he answered. ‘Hello?’

I swallowed a flutter of nerves, and pasted on a smile. ‘Hi. Thomas Goldwell? Tom? This is Cordelia Vesper. You might not remember me—’

‘Of course I do,’ he interrupted. ‘Adult women claiming a near relationship with me don’t show up every week.’

‘Right. Well, Dad, I have to tell you happy birthday. For tomorrow. Mum said so.’

‘Thank you.’

That seemed to be it, so I went on. ‘Also, I hear you’re a stonemason.’

‘I don’t practise the trade much any more, but I do have that skillset, yes.’

‘Okay. Then I’ve got a job for you.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s important. We’re restoring an Yllanfalen town, and we need people with the right skills and insight.’

‘Interesting, but I’m busy.’

‘Also, Mum said you have to help me.’

‘She said what?’

‘I’ll quote: “Tell him I told him to help you, if he knows what’s good for him.” Those exact words.’

He might have sighed, or there might have been a passing gust of wind, I couldn’t be sure.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me when and where.’

I was speechless with shock, too much to muster more than a strangled ‘thank you’ in reply.

He hung up on me without saying goodbye, demonstrating that he and my mother had at least one thing in common.

‘Great,’ I said into the phone. ‘See you soon.’

I put my phone away, uncertain as to the state of my feelings.

Mum was helping me out, and she hadn’t even argued that much.

And I would finally get to meet my dad again, even if he didn’t seem too excited about it.

Things among Family Ves were looking up. Vaguely. A little bit.

Sod it. If I didn’t need a husband, I didn’t need a mother or a father either. I’d managed just fine without those things.

Still, a girl can hope. Right?

Right.

And in the meantime, there’s Jay, who’s everything my family isn’t, and presently waiting to whisk me away to a dream dinner that I hadn’t even been able to scare him out of.

I dismissed my mountain of problems from my mind, opened my wardrobe and devoted myself to choosing a dress.

Enough work, Ves. Time to enjoy life a bit.

Dancing and Disaster: 18

Explaining the dance party to Milady wasn’t as hard as you might think. She’s met me before.

‘So the only conceivable way to avert total disaster and certain death was to challenge the tormented and wronged inhabitants of Silvessen to a dance battle,’ Milady said, just to make sure she had it straight.

‘Exactly,’ said I.

It was the next day, which was nice, because we’d had a free evening before we’d been summoned to make our report. An evening in which to get clean, and warm, and fed (again), and hugged (thank you Jay), and then to sleep the deep, peaceful slumber of Society agents who aren’t being mercilessly tortured by a quartet of unhappy glaistigs.

I had, however, been summoned particularly bright and early: it was barely seven o’clock, I hadn’t had breakfast yet, and was it my imagination or was the light getting steadily brighter in Milady’s tower-top interrogation room? Searingly bright, like I was under police questioning and nobody wanted me to feel very comfortable anytime soon.

I shifted nervously, and made myself stop.

‘And this worked out… well,’ Milady continued.

‘I mean, we lost,’ I admitted. ‘But I sort of did that my own self, so it’s not the same as actually being beaten, and the results were—’

‘Ves,’ Milady interrupted. ‘You’ve committed us to single-handedly restoring an entire town to its former glory. A town uninhabited for centuries, I might add, with no functional buildings and a magickal status best described as bleak.’

‘Yes! Isn’t it an exciting opportunity?’

There was a long and awful silence.

I didn’t even have my staunch and trusty comrades to back me up, because I’d been brought up here alone.

‘It’s not exactly single-handed when there are a couple of hundred of us at the Society,’ I ventured. ‘And I’d be happy to lead this project myself.’

‘Cordelia Vesper,’ said Milady, in a terrible voice. ‘If you think I will be landing anybody else with this — project, you are very much mistaken.’

‘Understood,’ I said quickly.

‘It is fortunate that some parts of the… necessary undertakings will dovetail, to some extent, with Orlando’s proposed programme of magickal restoration via the regulator.’

‘That’s what I was hoping.’

‘And the Troll Court may take an interest, considering that this restoration is similar to their hopes for Farringale.’

‘Exactly!’

‘As for the rest.’

I waited.

‘Do you have the first idea what it will cost to rebuild a town, Ves?’

‘Not really, but—’

‘And this is a heritage site of historical interest, so we cannot merely level the town and build whatever we’d like. Each of those buildings will have to be carefully restored, and rebuilt in a fashion that’s respectful to their origins. Which means special materials, expertise—’ She stopped with a gasp, as though the mere thought of everything had exhausted her.

I waited in meek silence for her to continue.

And when that didn’t work, I piped up with: ‘We have people for that!’

Which, in my defence, was true. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d had to intervene to save ancient buildings of magickal import, and among the permanent employees at the Society were a range of people with exactly the sorts of skills in woodcarving, thatching, stonemasonry and ironworking that Milady was talking about.

‘And the materials?’

This was a question I didn’t have a smart answer for, a fact I betrayed with a lengthy and unpromising silence.

‘I’ll think of something,’ I finally said.

‘I would consider it advisable that you do,’ said Milady, still rather awfully, and I trailed away feeling chastened.

***

Explaining the dance party to Ophelia was considerably more challenging.

I hadn’t had the courage to face her straight after my grilling at Milady’s hands, so I took refuge in the first-floor common room.

Where she found me, an hour later, nursing a cup of tea and staring sadly out of the window.

Tea, note. Not chocolate. Milady was definitely not quite pleased with me.

‘You’re back,’ Ophelia observed, sitting down opposite me in the chair Jay usually occupies.

It wasn’t that I was unhappy to see Ophelia; she’s a nice lady. But I wasn’t pleased to see her right then, before I’d had chance to recover from my undignified drubbing at Milady’s hands. As I watched her sit down, cool and calm and full of questions, I may have actually quailed a bit.

I forced a smile. ‘As you see. How are you?’ At least the common room was empty apart from the two of us. Nobody else would have to witness my attempts to explain the inexplicable to Merlin.

‘Very well, thank you,’ she said serenely, but I didn’t miss the narrow look she shot me as she spoke. As usual, she saw through me. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened?’ she went on.

I heaved a sigh, finished the dregs of my tea, and set down the emptied mug. ‘So. Silvessen was uninhabited, except not quite so uninhabited as we were expecting.’

The story took a while to get through, rather longer than I’d had to spend recounting everything to Milady. This was partly because Ophelia had questions. Lots of questions.

‘You did what?’ came up fairly often.

And twice she said: ‘Oh?’ in that dangerous way parents adopt while their children try to explain why they’re covered in chocolate spread from head to foot (example entirely hypothetical, definitely not something drawn from the storied experience of Tiny Ves).

Jay came in while I was about halfway finished. Finding his chair occupied, he took the seat next to me instead, and sat there in supportive silence while I stumbled through the rest of the story.

When I was finished, Ophelia looked at both of us in silence.

Finally, she spoke.

‘So you used the ancient magick of Merlin to hold a dance competition.’

I suppressed a sigh, and nodded. Take it like a queen, Ves. ‘It seemed the best thing to do,’ I offered.

Her eyes widened at that. ‘Did it?’

‘What would you have done?’

She just stared helplessly at me. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But definitely not that.’

I waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. She seemed shocked speechless.

‘Ves did great,’ Jay interjected. ‘The mission objectives were fulfilled, a rapport was established with the incumbents of Silvessen and a deal reached which will be of mutual benefit. Above all, no one was hurt.’ He smiled slightly, wryly, and amended that. ‘Save for a few pulled muscles all round.’

Ophelia was shaking her head. ‘To call it an unorthodox approach would not begin to cover it.’

‘That’s Ves for you.’

‘I see that.’

The look on her face. I tried not to feel like she was experiencing a crushing regret at having picked me for her successor.

Her next words dashed those hopes.

‘I chose you as the best candidate to inherit Merlin’s magick. Would you like to explain to me how that’s still true?’

I opened my mouth, and closed it again. I had a surplus of smart answers I could’ve given, but this was serious. For once, I had to be serious too. Why was I the right person to be the next Merlin?

Was I, even? I wasn’t certain of that myself. How could I convince Ophelia?

In the end, Jay saved me.

‘Permit me to point out a couple of things,’ he said. ‘For one, Ves has a boundless imagination and an inexhaustible supply of creative solutions to difficult problems.’

Ophelia snorted with laughter, which seemed favourable, and shook her head, which didn’t. ‘Demonstrably true.’

‘And for another. Let’s consider the hazards of this kind of a power handover. The greatest danger has to be that you’ll pick someone who won’t prove trustworthy. Someone who’ll abuse Merlin’s magick, turn it to ill effect. Someone who’ll be corrupted by it. Right?’

The ghost of a smile crossed Ophelia’s face. ‘I see where you’re going with this line of thinking.’

Jay smiled, too, much more widely. ‘So you gave Ves the opportunity to test drive Merlin’s magick, and what did she do? She figured out right away that she could use it to influence, if not outright control, other people’s behaviour, but what does that mean to Ves? The idea that she could enslave people to her will wouldn’t even occur to her, let alone interest her. There’s no puppeteering, no power tripping, and definitely no bloodbaths. No, you give Ves awesome cosmic powers and what does she do? She holds a dance party. That’s Ves. And that’s why she’s the right person to be Merlin.’

I felt tears pricking behind my eyes, and had to swallow a lump in my throat. I couldn’t even speak, so Jay had to be contented with a look of heartfelt gratitude. He smiled back, his eyes lingering on my face with an expression of such tenderness I had to look away.

Ophelia digested Jay’s words in silence for longer than I was comfortable with. I felt like my fate hung in the balance here; if she didn’t accept Jay’s argument, she’d take back all the beautiful, ancient magick and go find someone else to embody the archetype.

I wasn’t deeply committed to becoming the next Merlin; my life would go on even if I was passed over for it. But failure stings. And besides, I had stuff to do with those powers. I had heritage to save, people to help, magick to revive.

‘A dance battle.’ Ophelia was shaking her head again, but then, to my intense relief, she began to laugh.

She laughed and laughed until tears streamed from her eyes, and when she’d finally finished laughing she said: ‘I’ll say this: your turn as Merlin is going to be a lot more colourful than mine.’

Colourful. Good point. I touched a fingertip to a lock of my hair, and with a wisp of magick I turned it into a fluid purple-blue ombre. ‘I’ll consider it a point of honour,’ I told Ophelia, who smiled, so that was all right, then.

Later, when Ophelia had gone back to her cottage-out-of-time, Jay and I lingered a while in the common room. I had a great many things to do: arrange for a burial crew to tend to the remains of the deceased at Silvessen; negotiate with the Troll Court for assistance with the rebuilding, via Emellana; exercise my Yllanfalen contacts in hope of further aid; and figure out where in the world I was going to get a town’s worth of rare and expensive building materials.

But I didn’t feel motivated to work on any of it. I was tired, which was fair; yesterday was a long, long day, and I’d exercised my physical and magickal powers in all manner of unusual ways.

I was also feeling a little deflated. Nothing had turned out quite the way I was hoping, and I wasn’t sure what to make of where I’d ended up.

I must have heaved a little sigh, for Jay looked over at me and said: ‘All okay?’

I gestured at the emptied teapot. ‘I can’t remember the last time Milady gave me tea.’

Jay knew what that meant; he grimaced. ‘You deserved chocolate, though.’

‘I think it’s the rebuilding that she’s unhappy about. It is going to be expensive, for sure.’

‘That’s fair.’

‘And it is good tea. I think there was even some cream in it.’

‘Not entirely in the doghouse, then.’ He smiled at me, in a way that was probably supposed to be encouraging. I tried to smile back.

Jay leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees so he could give me one of his long, intense looks. ‘Ves. I meant what I said. You did a great job.’

‘Thanks.’ I managed a better smile. ‘I hope Orlando’s happy with us, at least?’

‘Reckon so. Indira vanished into the attic last night, and I haven’t heard from her yet. They’re probably up to their eyeballs in data.’

‘That’s good. Probably be another test mission going on soon.’

‘Maybe. Indira’s going to be busy monitoring Silvessen for a while yet. All we’ve established so far is that the regulator’s basic functions appear to work. What the effects will be on the Dell is a whole other question.’

‘So we’ll all be busy down at Silvessen for a while yet, thanks to me.’

Jay smiled and shrugged. ‘Yes, but I for one am looking forward to it. I don’t think anyone’s ever brought an entire town back from the dead before. And if we can do something like that at Silvessen, what does that mean for Farringale?’

I nodded. ‘I’m hoping the Troll Court will see it that way, too, and help us out.’

‘Em will get them on board.’

I tried to picture anybody standing up to a serenely determined Emellana and prevailing. I couldn’t. Even Their Majesties were outmatched there.

‘Em and Alban,’ I amended. ‘Pretty sure he’ll support us.’

Jay frowned slightly, and hesitated over his next words. ‘About Alban.’

‘Yes?’

He straightened again and leaned back in his chair, watching me. I wasn’t sure what for. ‘Are you… are you and he definitely not—?’

He didn’t seem disposed to finish the sentence, so I took a guess. ‘Going to be a thing? No. Definitely not.’

He scrutinised me with a rather dark gaze. I couldn’t read his expression. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Are you?’

‘Maybe. Are you?’

I thought about it, but I didn’t need to think for very long. ‘A little,’ I admitted. ‘But not as much as I might have expected. I think I was… dazzled.’

‘He is pretty dazzling.’

‘I doubt it would ever have worked out.’ Saying that out loud hurt, a little. Part of me had really wanted it to work out, but that was probably the dazzled and stupid part. ‘Anyway,’ I went on. ‘I so rarely date. I don’t have time, or… inclination, much.’

‘Really? You don’t want to date?’

‘I know that sounds weird.’ I tried not to feel defensive; it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s reacted badly to the idea. ‘I don’t hate dating, but it’s a lot of trouble and I don’t feel in need of a relationship.’

Jay nodded slowly. ‘I see.’

‘That’s what I meant when I said I was dazzled. I was so swept away by Alban that I forgot who I am, for a little while.’

‘And who is that?’

I hesitated.

‘If I may ask,’ Jay said quickly. ‘I don’t want to pry.’

I eyed Jay for a moment in silence. How much could I tell him? How much did I want to tell him?

‘I’m fine on my own,’ I answered. ‘I know people say that and sometimes it isn’t true, it’s a pose adopted against the loneliness that comes from wanting a relationship and not finding one. But in my case it’s the truth. I’ve never felt a strong drive to get into romantic or sexual relationships, and if I go through the rest of my life without one, I’ll be happy with that.’

Jay just nodded, giving me space to say more, if I wanted to.

I found that I did.

‘I don’t think I feel… attracted to people, the way others do,’ I said. ‘Not even Alban. I mean, he’s aesthetically delightful, and I might’ve liked to be kissed a bit, maybe, but that’s… that’s all.’

Jay nodded again, silent with a watchful attention which felt welcoming, not condemning. There was warmth in his gaze.

So I went on. ‘It’s hard to talk about, because… because people think that you must be broken, you know? They say you just haven’t met the right person yet, or that you must be damaged somehow. And maybe I’ve wondered, sometimes, if they’re right. You know how people talk about love and sex and soulmates — like it’s the crowning experience of all of humankind — and I’ve felt, sometimes, like I must be missing out on all that magic and beauty and — that my life must be the poorer for it.

‘So when Alban showed up and I was a bit starry-eyed over him I thought… maybe this is it, maybe this is the “right person” who’ll change those things about me, and I’ll finally learn what all the fuss is about. My life will finally be right and healthy and complete, in all the ways people talk about.

‘But that didn’t happen, because it isn’t that I haven’t met the magical person who’ll change me. It’s that I don’t need to change. My life isn’t broken and I’m happy as I am. So, no, I’m not too disappointed about Alban. I have a fantastic life and I don’t need a romance to complete me.’

I realised as I was speaking that I was trailing into defensiveness after all, but hey ho. I’d said it.

And far from condemning me, or recoiling from me, or arguing with me, Jay was smiling. ‘You’re dazzling,’ he said. ‘Never mind Alban. You’re the complete package all by yourself, and I agree: you don’t need a soulmate. Your soul’s perfect as it is.’

That sunk in all the way down, and lighted a little glow around my heart. ‘Thanks,’ I managed, through a fresh wave of threatened tears. Twice in one day, I must be tired. ‘It’s not that I don’t love people,’ I added. ‘I do. Deeply. You can love people completely even without sex or romance. I don’t think they’re the same things, at all.’

‘I have no trouble believing that,’ said Jay.

‘So… why were you asking about Alban?’

‘Um, well…’ Jay looked away, looked back at me, shifted in his seat. Uncomfy. What can of worms had I opened? ‘I had thoughts of… asking you to dinner. Or something. If you were free.’

‘You mean if I wasn’t hanging my heart on Alban like a coatrack.’

‘Something like that. But if you don’t want to date—’

‘I’d like to,’ I said quickly.

Jay hesitated, perhaps waiting for a “but something” to follow.

‘That’s it,’ I clarified. ‘I’d like to.’

A smile, somewhat relieved. ‘Let’s rephrase what I was going to ask,’ he said. ‘Would you like to have dinner with me with a view to developing a deeper relationship in a largely non-romantic way, and which certainly isn’t intended as a prelude to sex?’

‘Would that be… okay?’

‘Completely. Wonderfully.’

I smiled, too — then stopped as a thought occurred to me. ‘But wait. Weren’t you dating someone?’

‘Briefly. Not now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not. The idea was of interest to our parents, so we gave it a chance. But we found it wasn’t of similar interest to us.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re friends. It’s okay.’

‘And your parents are okay with that?’

‘Of course. They aren’t tyrants.’

‘Dinner’s on, then.’

Jay beamed. ‘How about tonight? Are you too tired?’

‘Tonight’s great. I do have something I want to do before then.’

‘Oh? Do you need backup?’

I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but not this time.’

Dancing and Disaster: 17

‘Zareen,’ I said, clearly and warily, as she approached me with that odd, jerky gait. Whoever was wearing her skin hadn’t had to operate a real, living body in a long time, I judged. She’d lost the knack of it. ‘Zar. Snap out of it. Please.’

There was a definite pause, or at least a slowing of the inexorable approach. Zareen was still in there somewhere. Good.

I danced back a few steps, searching my weary brain for an idea. Dealing with misbehaving spirits is Zareen’s job; what are we supposed to do when she’s the one who gets possessed?

‘Jay,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what to do here.’

‘Then it’s time for some of your trademark brilliant improvisation, because neither do I.’ We were backing up together, which worked fine until we ran out of street.

Zareen was closing on us, and— here came Indira and Emellana, neither of them in their right minds either.

‘We need Zareen back to fix this,’ I muttered to Jay. ‘Can you keep the other two busy while I work on that?’

‘Right.’ He took off at a run.

I didn’t see how he chose to carry out my somewhat peremptory request, because Zareen was getting in my face and I had more urgent problems. ‘Zareen, come on,’ I said, sharply clapping my hands. ‘You’re a boss and a queen and you’ve got this.’

She hadn’t got it. I could tell from the way she tried to grab my face with her red-lacquered fingernails (rather chipped).

Merlin time. What do I do, Ophelia, what do I do?

Go deep? Somewhere inside Zareen’s commandeered head my friend was still lurking, but how could I reach her? I didn’t have time to sit and commune with the elements, not while she was determinedly trying to claw out my eyes.

I tried anyway. I focused and I listened, and for a few seconds, I thought I had it. An echo of the Zareen I knew, something that felt like her. Yes. I grabbed hold of Zareen and I pulled.

And when that didn’t work, I lost my shit for a moment and tried the age-old art of headbutting. Why, you might ask? Did I think I could shock the ghost out of her by sheer brute force?

Hey, it was worth a try.

She shrieked, so did I (headbutting hurts), and nothing changed, except that on the next swipe she got hold of my face. Her thumb shoved into my mouth and her fingers were in my eyes and I was mad.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—’ I spat, and bit.

She shrieked again, and released me.

I took immediate advantage.

I opened my mouth and, with a wisp of Merlin-magick, amplified my typically dulcet tones to impossible volume. ‘SILVESSEN!’ I roared, and the syllables split the air with the force of a thunderclap, echoing off the bowl of the sky. ‘THIS IS SOMEWHAT CONTRARY TO THE SPIRIT OF OUR AGREEMENT, DON’T YOU THINK? PLEASE RECALL YOUR ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES TO A SENSE OF DECORUM OR WE DO NOT HAVE A DEAL.’

Jay shot past, high-tailing it to gods-knew-where. Pursued, a moment later, by Emellana and Indira, and then Jay came back around again.

Okay. Playing chicken with the glaistigs. That’s one way to distract them.

‘SILVESSSSSEEEN,’I screamed again, because Zareen wasn’t much daunted by my voice-of-the-gods routine and was coming at me again. ‘Don’t make me hurt Zareen or I WILL HURT YOU.

I would have, too, in that mood. It had been a difficult day, I was tired, and worst of all, I was hungry. And the carrier bags containing my carefully chosen repast were lying scattered in the street getting rained upon because Silvessen’s miserable cronies fancied a possession party, I mean, who’s got time for this?

Thankfully, I wasn’t obliged to do either of those things because she’d heard me. Well, she could hardly help it.

Another voice rolled through the heavens, almost as thunderous as mine. ‘Alaiona. Celaena. Fanessel. Desist.’

Zareen stopped dead. Behind her, Indira and Emellana came to an equally abrupt halt, so sharply they almost toppled over. All three shuddered convulsively, and then all three screamed, which was super fun.

And then all three of my colleagues and friends collapsed in the dirt.

‘Thanks,’ I muttered weakly, and dropped to my knees beside Zareen.

She was already coming around; her eyes were open, and when she looked at me I knew it was Zar because she was angry.

She came up spitting with fury. ‘Bitches tricked me,’ she snarled. ‘And they teamed me, too, because they knew I was the threat. Let me at them.’

‘Nope,’ I said, planting a palm on her chest when she tried to jump up. ‘Silvessen recalled them because walking your carcasses around rather contravened the terms of the deal we just made. I’m afraid forcibly exorcising her only friends would have much the same effect.’

Zareen’s only response was a wordless snarl, but she made no further attempts to tear off in a murderous rage, so I let her be while I checked on Emellana.

‘Why does my head hurt,’ I heard Zareen mutter as I left her.

Em was on her feet by the time I reached her, brushing mud off her coat.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I feel like we shouldn’t have left you.’

Unruffled as ever, she twinkled at me. ‘Food was important. Where is it, by the way?’

‘Over there.’ I pointed. ‘You seem remarkably unperturbed for a recently possessed woman.’

‘It’s happened before. Never pleasant, but you can get used to anything.’ With which wisdom, she ambled away in the direction of food, leaving me to unhappy contemplation of her words.

What do you have to go through to get used to malevolent possession?

Did I want to know?

I did not.

I turned in search of Indira.

No need. Her big brother had her in a big hug, which was good, because even from here I could see she was drawn and shaking. Poor girl. She was so young, she’d had none of the experience Emellana benefited from.

‘I shouldn’t have left you,’ Jay was saying, echoing my own words. ‘If I’d been here—’

‘If you’d been here, what?’ Indira interrupted, and pulled away from him. ‘What were you going to do?’

Jay seemed at a loss for an answer. Fair, because it was a really good question. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘Something to protect you—’

Indira became icily dignified, unconsciously mirroring Emellana’s gestures as she brushed herself down. ‘Bad things happen sometimes. You can’t prevent that.’

‘Even so—’

No. It isn’t up to you to protect me from the world, and it wouldn’t help me much if you could. How am I supposed to become competent myself if you never let me experience anything that might be challenging?’

‘There’s challenging, and then there’s forcible possession by a dangerous spirit—’

‘Jay.’ Indira looked him dead in the eye, ice-cold. ‘Resilience is the product of encountering adversity, and surviving. You do want me to grow into a strong and capable adult?’

There was no good comeback to that, and Jay didn’t try. Wise man. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I hear you. I’m sorry.’

She nodded, and that was that.

‘Thanks for the hug,’ she said. ‘It helps.’ And then both of them were looking around for me, and for food, possibly in that order or possibly not.

The mood as we tore through our repast was subdued. I don’t know what had led any of us to expect a nice, easy mission; when did that ever pan out? But we had, and instead we’d been emotionally tortured, our wits were tested, our physical bodies were pushed to their limits (and beyond), and finally several of us had been used as sock puppets.

And we hadn’t eaten all day. At least that was a problem we could fix.

We ate huddled inside one of the more intact of Silvessen’s cottages, which at least kept the rain and some of the wind off us. But a half hour sitting in one place left us shivering with cold and very ready to be going home.

I made the last morsel of my second eclair last, savouring the sweetness and the cream.

And when it was finished, and the last drops of cooling tea drained, I — and Jay and Zareen and even Emellana — turned a hopeful look upon Indira.

‘Let’s have a look,’ said she, rising (a little stiffly) to her feet.

She crossed the street and sat in the dirt next to the regulator, sat there for a while with her palms to the earth and her brain on some other plane of reality. I don’t know what she was doing, but after ten minutes she stood up, made a hopeless and ineffectual attempt to wipe the mud off her trousers, and shrugged. ‘It seems to be okay,’ she said.

Which is as good a way of tempting fate as any I’ve ever heard, and she really ought to have known better.

Because that was when the horde of carnivorous unicorns showed up.

Okay, just kidding about the unicorns. What actually happened was nothing, which at that point could scarcely have surprised me more.

‘It’s okay?’ I repeated dumbly.

Indira nodded. ‘I think so. Nothing anomalous is going on, and it seems stable.’

‘Can you… get it out of there?’

‘No.’

‘Milady won’t be happy.’

Indira looked pained. ‘I know, and I would prefer to remove it, but I can’t.’

‘So we leave it here.’

‘Yes. It’ll have to be checked regularly for a few weeks to monitor the results, tweak and recalibrate as necessary, but for now it’s fine.’

‘And we can go home.’

‘Yes,’ said Indira, and added, fervently, ‘please.’

Dancing and Disaster: 16

‘Those glaistigs?’ I heard Jay mutter near my ear. ‘I get the feeling they’re disinclined to accept defeat.’

‘Dance-off’s still on,’ I agreed.

‘And I’d say we’ve been bested,’ said Zareen.

I shook my head. Vehemently. ‘If there’s one rule I live by, it’s this: never accept defeat in a dance-off against legions of the undead.’

And, hey, we tried. Jay played the Bee Gees and Donna Summer and we threw some shapes. We were a perfect disco-dancing dream team, but we were outnumbered a thousand to one and those glaistigs are smart. Why bother coming up with your own routines when you could just copy the other guy?

Everything we did, they did too.

I’ll say this: if you’ve never witnessed five-thousand mostly decayed corpses perform a ‘Saturday Night Fever’routine in perfect unison, you haven’t lived.

And while I’ve rarely been more entirely thrilled in my life, I couldn’t disagree when Jay finally said: ‘Ves? I think we’ve reached a point where this could go on all night.’

Regretfully, I concurred. ‘But I can’t tell you how much it hurts me to be beaten at my own dance-battle game.’

We stopped dancing.

So did our opponents. Instantly.

Hmm.

‘All right,’ I called. ‘We concede, I suppose.’

Silvessen’s voice answered. ‘That makes the contest a draw, does it not?’

I winced a bit as I replied. ‘Yes, yes it does.’

‘But I perceive that you have already availed yourselves of the boon you were to ask of us.’

I wondered how she knew that. Had they been watching us while we’d worked, or had the effects of the regulator’s installation been noticeable all the way out at the haunted house?

‘How about you win a prize, too?’ I offered. ‘Everybody wins.’

‘A boon?’

‘A boon.’

Zareen made a choking noise. ‘Ves, you don’t offer an enraged glaistig a carte blanche. Have I taught you nothing?’

‘It’s a fair deal,’ I protested. ‘Same deal they gave us.’

‘It is fair,’ Silvessen agreed, ringingly. I still couldn’t see her, or her fellows. Her voice echoed out of the air, impossibly amplified.

The skeletons hadn’t moved. They had frozen from the moment we had ceased to dance, as though controlled by a puppeteer who’d lost interest and wandered off.

‘Nice work with the, um, villagers,’ I offered, gesturing at the surrounding horde of the undead. ‘Very neat.’

A long pause followed. ‘True, I called them,’ Silvessen finally answered. ‘Some of them.’

‘Some of them?’

‘The regulator,’ Emellana said from behind me, ‘amplified the effect somewhat.’

Oh.

Silvessen hadn’t summoned five-thousand dead villagers. We had.

Sort of.

‘That was, um, not intentional,’ I said in a smaller voice. ‘Um, but you were a terrific troupe leader.’

‘Was I?’

I blinked.

‘I called them to the dance,’ Silvessen continued. ‘At first.’

‘You… at first? What were they supposed to do after?’

Her silence was eloquent in ways that sent a shiver down my spine.

‘Yeah,’ said Zareen. ‘People don’t usually haul corpses out of the grave for a dance party, Ves.’

‘Got it. But then… why did they…?’

Jay leaned closer to me, and spoke in a low voice. ‘Notice how they copied our every move?’

‘Yes.’

‘And they stopped as soon as we did?’

‘Yes…’

‘Think about it a moment.’

My stomach dropped through the floor.

What had I been doing, besides dancing?

I’d been guiding my team’s moves, that’s what. Using my Merlin superpowers to shape us into an elite, perfectly synchronised dance troupe.

‘The radius of effect might have been slightly larger than I intended,’ I muttered.

Jay patted my shoulder. ‘To be fair, this day could have turned out worse.’

Emellana agreed. ‘If you’re going to absently wrest control of an undead army from the hands of an enraged murder victim, there are worse things you could do with it.’

‘And hey, we’re in one piece,’ Zareen said. ‘No thanks to Silvessen.’

My face was so hot I was surprised I didn’t burst into flame.

‘Let’s move on,’ I said hurriedly. I had some things to think quite hard about, but that would have to wait. I’d still promised a favour to a long-dead Yllanfalen nursing an ocean of grudges, and the regulator was still out there somewhere, doing its thing. Unmonitored.

I lifted my voice. ‘Your boon?’ I called. ‘What would you have?’

Instead of an answer, she returned with a question. ‘What is it that you’ve done?’

She wasn’t talking about the skeletons, I guessed. ‘We installed a magickal device. It’s new and we’re testing it, but its intended effect is to reverse the process of magickal decay — or reduce the effects of magickal overflow, as appropriate — and, um, restore balance.’

The silence was longer this time.

‘Did you feel a change?’ Jay asked. ‘An hour ago. The earth quaked, and then…’

A fair question. I didn’t notice much difference, yet, but we had arrived in Silvessen approximately five minutes ago. Silvessen herself had been born and died here; the town bore her name. She had lingered down the ages through centuries of silence and decay, because… well, because she was angry.

Perhaps also because she’d loved the place.

If it changed, she would know.

‘Will it work?’ came her echoing voice, softer now, with a note of… hope?

‘We don’t know, Jay said, honest to a fault as always. ‘But if it doesn’t, we’ll work on it until it does.’

‘Then that is the boon I would ask,’ said Silvessen ringingly. ‘Make my town whole again.’

‘You mean… magicakally?’ I asked.

‘In every way.’

Rebalance, repair, repopulate. Tall order.

I exchanged an uneasy glance with Jay, who shrugged. Right. Fair was fair — what choice did we have?

Especially since I’d managed to lose my own dance battle by way of the most spectacular own goal in world history.

‘Could be good,’ I ventured. ‘Could be interesting.’

‘Better hope Milady agrees,’ said Zareen darkly.

Emellana was shaking with laughter. ‘I think I can promise aid from the Troll Court,’ she said, when she’d regained control of herself. ‘Their Majesties will enjoy this story.’

‘And we have Yllanfalen connections aplenty,’ Jay put in.

‘Right,’ I nodded, ignoring Emellana’s remarks with superb grace. ‘You. Indira. My mum.’

‘I think the Society will want to do it.’ Jay smiled at me. ‘I mean, what does the Society do?’

‘Find things that are lost,’ I replied. ‘Mend things that are broken. Rescue things that need help.’

‘Exactly. This project is just a little bigger than usual.’

I took a breath, feeling better. ‘We have a deal,’ I called. ‘But it’ll take time; we can’t do it in a week. And we’ll need to bring a lot more people down here.’

No reply came, at least not in words. But a breeze wafted past, no longer the bone-chilling cold we’d suffered since we stepped into Silvessen Dell. This was a warm, soft wind, sweet and welcoming. A good sign.

And, to my immense relief, the legions of eerily silent skeletons turned around and walked slowly away. Back, presumably, to their opened graves, there to tuck themselves back in and return to slumber.

‘Okay,’ I sighed, stretching my aching limbs. ‘Indira. What do we still need to do before we can get out of here?’

‘I need to make sure the regulator’s stable,’ she answered. ‘Orlando said to monitor it for at least a few hours.’

‘If I’m expected to go another few hours without food, I will be committing multiple murder,’ Zareen informed us. ‘And there aren’t very many other people here, just saying.’

‘Got it,’ I said. ‘I undertake to preserve my life and that of my friends by way of pancakes, post haste.’

‘Sandwiches would be better, but I’ll take pancakes if that’s what you’ve got.’

She proceeded to stare at me expectantly, as though I might be disposed to magick up a couple of sandwiches on the spot.

Which I couldn’t, of course.

Could I?

Following my mishaps in the Fifth Britain and subsequent Merlinhood, more things were possible in Heaven and Earth than I’d previously imagined.

Maybe I could magick up sandwiches on demand.

I tried this.

‘Your face has gone funny,’ Zareen said, after a while. ‘Are you… doing something?’

‘I’m making sandwiches.’

Zareen’s brows rose. ‘To make a sandwich, you take bread, tuna fish, mayonnaise and sweetcorn, and combine them to delicious effect. What you’re doing is… no, I have no idea.’

‘I’m discovering myself to be significantly less amazing than I was hoping,’ I said.

‘Impossible,’ said Jay.

I smiled gratefully at him. ‘I’m glad you feel that way, because if I can’t spirit up some food on the spot then we’re going to have to go out for some.’

Jay bowed. ‘At your service, my lady. Lead on.’

‘I’m guessing you’re hungry, too.’

‘Absolutely famished.’

***

So Indira departed for the centre of main street again, there to stand watch over the regulator. She was accompanied by Emellana, and Zareen (‘Silvessen might have backed off,’ Zar explained, ‘but her friends are still floating around somewhere.’)

Jay escorted our local Captain of Food (yours truly) to the border of the Dell, and I took us back out into the world. The real world, the one that still had life and people in it.

It felt odd, like I’d been sitting in a blank silence for hours and was suddenly thrust back into vivid life again. Jay whisked us back to Bakewell, wherein we encountered movement and colour and the sounds of blissfully ordinary daily life. In other words, people.

I wondered how Silvessen felt after centuries of nothing and decay, with only a few, equally ghostly compatriots for company.

Then I pictured how she might feel if we could turn her town back into something like Bakewell. A community again. A centre for trade and industry. A home.

A worthy mission, I decided.

‘Tuna mayo for Zareen,’ I said, having exited a busy bakery, laden with carrier bags. ‘Cheese and tomato for you and Indira. Egg and cress, chicken salad, and sausage rolls for Em and me and anybody else who wants one.’

‘A fine haul,’ Jay agreed, eyeing the bags hungrily.

‘Plus, custard tarts, Danishes, chocolate eclairs, Bakewell puddings and a couple of flapjacks.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Tea. Buckets of it.’ I handed Jay a tray of drinks containers, gently steaming, which he took with the air of a man receiving a valuable and precious charge. If you want someone who’ll guard the tea with his actual life and never, ever spill so much as a drop of it, ask Jay.

Nor did he, even during the return trip back through the Winds of the Ways. We arrived in Silvessen with cups intact, bags only mildly savaged (sorry, I couldn’t help it), and plenty of good things for all.

Which was why it was a bit disconcerting to find nobody waiting for us.

‘Indira!’ Jay called, turning in circles (still without spilling the tea). ‘Emellana!’

No one answered.

I trotted to the middle of the main street, where Indira had set down the regulator. When I laid my palm against the damp earth, I felt a pulse of magick and a faint warmth: the device was still down there and still operative.

So where were my team?

‘Zareen!’ I yelled, straightening again. ‘Come on, you’re missing the tuna mayo.’

‘Here I am!’ Zareen trilled. And then she came walking around the side of the same tumble-down cottage in which I’d discovered the first skeleton.

Something was wrong with her voice, I noticed in passing; she sounded sing-song and shrill, which was not at all like her.

Something was wrong with her walk, too. She moved stiffly and jerkily, like a clumsily operated marionette. She grinned at us, but it wasn’t a smile; this was a horrifying grimace, a face-stretching pantomime of warmth and mirth that chilled me to the bottom of my soul.

If I had to guess, I’d say Zareen had gone and got herself possessed.

And if Zar, of all people, had ended up possessed, there wasn’t much hope that Indira or Emellana could have avoided a similar fate.

We had three angry glaistigs still on the loose somewhere — and we’d left our three friends behind without us while we’d gone in search of custard tarts.

‘It’s official,’ I sighed. ‘No mission in the history of time has ever been this much of a disaster.’

Dancing and Disaster: 15

‘I think that means we won,’ I said into the silence.

The silence stretched, and nobody answered me.

I raised my voice. ‘If anyone would like to dispute that, feel free.’

Nothing.

I felt more uneasy than triumphant. This wasn’t quite the glorious victory I’d been hoping for, and without an explanation as to where or why they had gone, we were left guessing.

Well. They’d already demonstrated a flair for creative torment. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I shrugged, and took a decisive breath. ‘Votes? What do we do?’

‘Proceed,’ Zareen said immediately. ‘We’ve wasted enough time.’

‘Wasted? Zar, come on. We had a great time.’

She gave me a speaking look. Since she retained most of her death’s head characteristics, the effect was sufficiently appalling.

‘Moving on,’ I said hastily. ‘Anybody else?’

‘I agree,’ said Emellana. ‘The terms of our agreement were clear, and we have fulfilled them.’

‘Also, I’m hungry,’ Zareen added.

‘Now that you mention it, me too,’ I agreed.

It came down to Jay’s opinion. While he often questioned my peculiar decisions, he rarely mounted any serious objection. If he did so today, I’d listen. In fact, as a general rule, I’d do pretty much anything that registered as important with him.

I’m not sure he knows he has that power.

‘I’d be happier to know for certain that they’re in agreement with our proceeding with the project,’ Jay said.

‘Agreed,’ I nodded.

‘But if neither you nor Zareen can track them down, then we’re out of options. They have been given more than fair opportunity to object, if they want to.’

Indira nodded along with Jay’s words and seemed disinclined to venture an alternative perspective, so that was us in agreement. ‘In that case, go time.’ I retrieved my coat and buttoned myself back into it.

Our door still opened onto the barren fields, and we trooped out.

I left the craggy old house with a little reluctance, and not only because of the uncertainty surrounding the glaistigs’ disappearance. They’d lingered there down the centuries, alone except for each other, and in a state of misery and torment. I’d wanted to offer them a way out. Zareen couldn’t exorcise all four of them if they were fighting her every step of the way, but what if they agreed to it? What if they wanted to go?

Too bad. I should have mentioned it sooner; now it was too late.

The mood was subdued as we trailed back to the village of Silvessen. We were tired, we were confused, we were uneasy. But we were also victorious, and within an hour or two of completing our test and getting out of there.

We stopped in a huddle in the middle of the main street, and Indira found herself the centre of everyone’s attention.

This pleased her as much as ever, for she flushed darker, and fidgeted with the buttons of her coat. ‘Um, this is probably as good a place as any,’ she agreed, glancing up and down the street.

‘Do you need help with setting up the regulator?’ I asked.

She shook her head. I watched in fascination as she tapped two fingers against the palm of her hand and produced — apparently from thin air — a tiny, shimmering device shaped like a spinning top. Argent. It glimmered with mesmerising radiance as she turned it in her fingers.

‘Neat trick,’ I murmured. ‘Teach me some time.’

‘It’s just a pocket,’ Indira answered.

‘A pocket of… air. Apparently.’

‘Something like that.’

‘That’s the regulator?’ asked Emellana. ‘All of it?’

I saw her point. The thing was tiny, even smaller than the child’s toy I’d mentally compared it with. I don’t know what I had expected; something bigger, certainly. More complex. Something with knobs and dials and whirling things; something impressive, at any rate.

‘This is it,’ Indira confirmed. ‘Argent’s really a useful substance. You don’t need much of it to produce a significant effect. Orlando spent weeks condensing the size; it’s more portable this way, and you don’t need very much argent, which is important when you consider how little argent there is and how many Dells and Enclaves are going to need help…’ She trailed off, as if realising how many words she’d strung together all in one go.

‘I meant no criticism,’ said Emellana in her mild way. ‘I spoke out of surprise, not disapproval. It’s a very clever design.’

Indira nodded. ‘The rotation’s useful. It creates a kind of centrifugal force which was found to have an amplifying effect. And it’s quite simple to deploy.’ So saying, she knelt down in the street and gently set the regulator, point first, against the mud of the long-decayed road.

After that, I felt a whisper, barely discernible, of stirring magick. The regulator began, slowly at first, to turn, silvery and rippling like water. With every rotation, the stirring of magick built and built, until it became a near palpable force.

A faint tremor ran through the earth.

Indira stood up, and took a few steps back, motioning for us to follow suit.

I scrambled backwards, needing little encouragement to clear the area. The tremors were gaining in intensity, and I began to wonder if we’d started an earthquake. These ramshackle houses wouldn’t bear the force. We’d knock the whole village down.

‘Indira?’ That was Jay, disquieted, casting uneasy glances at the half-ruined cottages. He’d positioned himself between his sister and me, his pose wary but prepared, as if he proposed to deflect any dislodged bricks or beams from both of us at once.

‘Give it a moment.’ Indira, in contrast, displayed no tension at all. She stood composed, watching the regulator with a deep focus that told me she was monitoring it with far more than just her eyes.

I followed her gaze, and refocused my own attention on the regulator. I could feel it, a central force sending waves of magick surging farther and farther, like a burgeoning tide. As I watched, it began to descend into the earth, sending up a spray of mud as it disappeared from view.

Zareen stood watching with her arms folded, hunched in on upon herself. It occurred to me that she was shivering, which wasn’t a good sign. Zar isn’t usually sensitive to the cold. ‘Is that supposed to happen?’ she was asking.

‘No,’ said Indira. She didn’t seem perturbed.

‘This is a test, after all,’ I observed. ‘It’s bound to do some unexpected things.’

The unexpected effects continued, and by that I mean they continued to get worse. The rumbling intensified, the earth shaking underfoot. Zareen fell, with an exclamation of surprise and disgust, and I toppled into Jay.

‘Sorry,’ I gasped.

He merely shook his head, steadying me with outstretched hands. ‘Indira, maybe we should stop this,’ he shouted over the noise of the tremors.

‘I… can’t,’ she replied. ‘We’re committed.’

My stomach dropped. This was bad news. The cottages were mostly tumbled down already, they wouldn’t bear much more of this; if we succeeded in creating a magickal resurgence at Silvessen only to reduce its structures to a pile of rubble in the process… hard to call that a success.

‘Give it another minute,’ shouted Indira, rather pointlessly, for we didn’t seem to have any other choice.

It was possibly the longest minute of my life. I hung onto Jay while the ground heaved under our feet; Emellana abandoned her attempts to remain upright, and opted to sit down; Zareen hauled herself up, only to sink back down in disgust. Clouds of dust and ancient straw flew from the tortured roofs of Silvessen’s houses, those that weren’t already a collection of bare eaves and beams.

The house nearest to us creaked alarmingly, its timbers emitting a deep, tormented groan.

‘We might need to run,’ Jay said, and I couldn’t disagree.

And then, suddenly, it was over. The ground steadied, the profound tremors fading into stillness. The ominous rumbling of brittle timbers stopped, leaving a deep, hushed silence in its wake.

I realised I was holding my breath, and let it out in a rush. ‘We’re okay.’

‘We are.’ Jay let go of me, and straightened, looking around. All the houses were still standing, as much as they’d ever been. We’d dislodged a lot of loose matter, which lay littered about the streets, but other than that, everything was—

Fine, I was about to say. But, no. Because that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it?

The silence lasted only a minute or two, and then a new sound shattered the peace. A thundering thump, thump, thump, rhythmic and regular, like… like a drum. Several drums.

Music.

The singing began a moment later: high, ululating voices wailing words I vaguely recognised as an Yllanfalen dialect. And another sound, one I didn’t immediately place.

Footsteps. Pounding footsteps marching in time to the beat of the invisible drums.

‘Um,’ said Zareen, looking about. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I can tell you, it isn’t going to be good.’

And when Zareen calls something ‘not good’, she tends to mean do you have your affairs in order?

‘Skeleton,’ Jay croaked.

‘What?’ I whirled around.

I thought that’s what he said; the racket was tremendous, however melodic, and surely he couldn’t have meant—

‘Skeleton,’ he said again, louder.

They came clambering out of the wrecked doorways of their ruined houses, stamping their fleshless feet in time to the beat of the Yllanfalen drums. So many skeletons, more than I’d imagined these houses could hold. Far more.

A phalanx of them approached from each end of the village street, marching in perfect time. Ridden with fresh, wet earth, some of them, shaking splinters of decayed wood from their shoulders, their gaping eye sockets blank as they advanced on us.

‘They’ve raised the entire population of Silvessen,’ Zareen choked. ‘All of them.’

Every single person who’d ever lived and died in Silvessen, she meant. Not just those who’d been slain by the hex. Every single one, reaching back hundreds of years.

We were in trouble.

‘They?’ Emellana yelled. ‘Did they do this, or did we?’

Giddy gods. She was right. Was it the glaistigs who’d done this, or had we somehow set this in motion ourselves with Orlando’s regulator? Was it the surge of magick that had spun these poor souls out of their graves and sent them into the streets?

We’d formed a circle, the five of us, standing back-to-back in a futile attempt to defend ourselves from the advancing horde of the dead. We couldn’t hope to prevail against so many, despite Zareen’s presence, despite Merlin’s magick. We were in trouble.

‘This is not how I pictured this day ending,’ I muttered, groping for an idea. Something. Anything. What was I Merlin for, if I couldn’t deal with a mere several hundred dead people? At this rate, I wouldn’t be Merlin for long.

‘This is not how I pictured this life ending,’ said Jay.

I was panicking and I knew it. My brain spun in useless circles, picking up and discarding ideas like a hyperactive kid in a sweet shop. Fire? No. I could set a bunch of them alight, but if it worked I’d take out the whole village and probably the five of us, too. If it didn’t, too bad.

Air? Wind? I’d used that to good effect already, and maybe I could… what, blow them away?

Too late. Too little time. I needed strategy for a threat like this, some kind of plan, and I didn’t have one. We were out of luck.

The skeleton horde was twenty feet away and closing…

I shut my eyes.

The marching footsteps stopped, all at once, as if on cue. Seconds ticked by, and nothing happened. No bony hands closed around me, tearing me to pieces. No impacts. No pain.

I opened my eyes.

They’d formed a circle around us and were standing, motionless, staring at us with those empty, black eye sockets. They’d spaced themselves out to about a metre apart, fanning out around us in even regiments.

Well, regiments wasn’t the word. There was nothing martial in their posture. They didn’t look like they were preparing to attack, or to defend. They looked like they were waiting. For what?

The rhythm of the pounding drums changed, and the voices fell briefly silent.

A new song was beginning.

I eyed the front ranks of skeletons.

‘If I didn’t know better,’ I said slowly, ‘I’d say that looks remarkably like… like… well, like a flash mob.’

A single, female voice began a new melody, a raw, raucous sound layered with fury. Silvessen. She was out there somewhere.

Something in the roar of drums and words must have contained a cue, because the skeletons, as one, struck a pose.

And then… they began to dance. All of them. In unison.

Dancing and Disaster: 14

There was, for a short time, uproar. The other three glaistigs re-materialised, hissing something at me that I couldn’t catch. This was partly because my own team were raising vociferous protests at the same time.

‘Ves, did you just challenge a quartet of murderous ghosts to a dance-off?’ Jay was saying, sounding really very surprised, which was unreasonable of him; hadn’t he met me already?

‘A brilliant plan,’ Emellana was saying, and I think she meant it, ‘but with one grave flaw: I have no talent for dancing. At all.’

Zareen was losing it altogether. This took the form of wordless cackling, which, emanating as it did from her death’s head of a face, enhanced nobody’s comfort at all.

Indira just stared at me, silent and pale. When I caught her eye, she simply said: ‘I can’t dance.’

I smiled encouragement at my four trusty colleagues. ‘I know we haven’t exactly rehearsed anything, but you can trust me. Please. Will you?’

Jay knew me well enough to smell a rat. I could tell from the way his eyes narrowed when he looked at me, and then he folded his arms and I knew I was in trouble. ‘Trust you,’ he repeated.

‘I won’t hurt you.’

He sighed. He knew I was asking a lot more than I seemed to be. He knew, or he guessed, what I was proposing to do.

I knew he wouldn’t like it.

But it was still better than an actual battle, and it was also better than fleeing the scene, defeated (supposing we were permitted to do so without further torment). I knew it. Jay knew it.

He inclined his head in a nod.

‘Thank you,’ I said in relief. For a moment, I’d been afraid he wouldn’t back me up.

Emellana raised her brows at me. Her lips curved in a faint, wryly amused smile. ‘I trust you know what you’re doing,’ said she.

‘As usual,’ I replied, ‘I haven’t a clue.’

She saluted me, with more than a hint of irony about it, but she was still smirking, so I decided I’d take it.

‘All with me?’ I asked of my team.

Zareen had stopped cackling in favour of an utterly terrifying grin. ‘I get so bored when I’m not on assignment with you,’ she said, which was a yes more than it wasn’t.

That just left Indira. She still resembled a frightened doe more than the competent, powerful woman I knew her to be, and that worried me a little. But she took her cues from Jay, especially when it came to me, and if he was choosing to go with the crazy, Ves-flavoured flow… I watched her eyes stray from my face to his, and back again. He’d given her a reassuring smile.

‘I can’t dance,’ she said again.

‘It’s okay. Doesn’t matter.’

She nodded.

All right, then.

I turned back to the glaistigs. ‘Out of interest,’ I said, addressing their apparent leader. ‘Are you Silvessen?’

‘I am.’ Her ghostly visage flickered for a moment, and I saw again the Yllanfalen woman underneath. The woman she’d been in life.

‘I’m sorry for what happened to your people,’ I said. ‘When we’re done, we would like permission to carry all those left to a place of rest, employing any rites or practices you’d prefer.’

‘We accept,’ said Silvessen. Instantly, without so much as a moment’s thought.

Had she and her companions lingered here all these years merely in want of someone to bury their remains?

How had it taken so long?

‘Do you also accept our challenge?’ I said.

She gave no answer, at least in words. Instead, she and her three companions joined hands and began to sway. A ripple of music began, haunting and sad, quiet at first. The violin was back on the balcony, and a pipe had joined it, though the strains I heard were complex and layered; the work of many instruments, though we saw only two. The song was palpably sad, a heartbreaking lament that tore at my soul. My face dampened with tears.

The music swelled, rising in volume until it was a blast of sound, almost physically painful. A freezing wind tore around the ballroom, centred around the four glaistigs; the whirling currents tore at my clothes, shoving me backwards.

My back hit the wall. My team were similarly afflicted; we were pinned there like a row of butterflies, flapping weakly against the insurmountable forces of the elements ranged against us. I could hear nothing over the tumult of wind and music, so whatever Jay was helpfully shouting at me was lost forever.

It wasn’t a true dance-off, of course. For that we’d need rules and judges and an audience and costumes and there was no chance of any of that.

This was a contest of magick, expressed through music. And dance. That being so, it might be considered unwise of me to challenge a group of angry Yllanfalen; proposing to compete with them in a contest of musical magick is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Oops.

That said, we had Jay. And Indira.

And me.

I’m going to do my brilliant and incredibly effective music-thing,’ is what I guessed Jay was trying to yell at me. Because he straightened after that, and began walking directly into that fell wind with all the controlled power of an action hero. He stretched out a hand to Indira, and she took it in a white-knuckled grip.

The two siblings advanced on our foes like an unstoppable tide.

The glaistigs might have opened with music, but they were dancing, too. Sort of. The swaying had turned into a fluid, free-form, interpretive-dance situation; very Kate Bush in ‘Wuthering Heights’. More graceful than it sounds, despite the flailing arms and flying hair.

The roar of music began, blessedly, to diminish. Soon I could hear Jay. He was shouting something.

Your turn, Ves.

Right.

There are two main advantages to long attendance at boarding school, and those are: boredom, and extracurricular activities. There isn’t much to do during evenings and weekends. It’s homework or dance classes, and what kind of a person chooses homework?

Ballet was Mondays, tap on Tuesdays, jazz on Thursdays and ballroom on the weekends. I had range. And, okay, I hadn’t done any of those things for some time, but my body remembered the moves.

I crossed the floor in a series of piqué turns (passable), ending with an arabesque. Pirouette en dedans, messed up my fouetté but never mind, onto a series of chaînés, bourrée

‘Ves,’ Jay was yelling. ‘You’re supposed to have shoes for that.’

Yes, yes I was. Pointe shoes, with wooden blocks to protect the toes (or mince them, whichever happened first).

‘It may surprise you to learn that pointe shoes are not typically included in my emergency travel kit.’ I was a little out of breath, being more than a little out of practice, but my toes were fine, because where I lacked suitable shoes I didn’t lack for suitable magick. If I could manipulate the air around me to open a bunch of doors, I could sure as hell use it to waft myself along like a dandelion seed on the wind.

The effect was charming, if I do say so myself.

My routine set, I caught Zareen up and drew her along with me. Piqué, arabesque, pirouette en dedans, fouetté — and Indira made three, and we were a flurry of leaves floating on the wind, Indira a being of perfect grace, Zareen a sweeping figure of intense, concentrated motion—

Jay shook his head, but resistance was futile, and he knew it.

***

And that’s how we ended up at saut de basque sodecha, by way of a solid series of jetés, pirouettes à la seconde and a pretty spectacular cabriole.

Maintaining sole control over a five-person dance troupe without messing it (or them) up or shredding my own sanity? No picnic. If I wasn’t Merlin there’s no way I could have pulled it off. And I’m pretty sure this is not what Ophelia had in mind when she handed over the keys to an ancient and indescribably powerful magickal archetype, but what can I say? Nobody died. A few pulled muscles were sustained and a bruise or two, but there was no bloodshed whatsoever and everybody walked away sane. Who can say fairer than that?

Half an hour later, we were winded and sweating and aching in more than a few places.

‘Double tour en l’air, Ves,’ Jay insisted, so I obliged, and I regretted it, but fair’s fair.

Then it was Emellana’s turn. She isn’t built for ballet, but let me tell you, she’s spectacular at flamenco.

Jay and I closed with a dazzling waltz.

‘Wonderful job, everyone,’ I applauded, gasping for air and smiling from ear to ear.

‘Fantastic,’ Zareen panted. ‘Just one problem.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’ve lost our opponents.’

I turned around, searching the ballroom. No glaistigs visible to the eye. No glaistigs visible to my other senses, either.

They’d gone.

Dancing and Disaster: 13

‘I’ve found a skeleton,’ I said aloud. The words burst from my lips, quite loud; the product of pure surprise. Of all the things I might have expected to find in here, contorted skeletal remains definitely weren’t it.

The poor soul had not enjoyed a peaceful death. That much seemed clear from the pose: twisted as though in agony, mouth agape. I could tell little else: clothes and flesh alike were long decayed, leaving only bones and dust.

I backed away, returning to the table.

The house was curiously intact, considering the state of its occupant. A pottery plate and cup stood atop the table; nothing valuable in either, but still odd. Possessions tend to be passed on when their owner dies, and considering the antiquity of this cottage and its contents, they most certainly would have found a home elsewhere. Useful objects were in short supply back in the mists of time; you couldn’t just pop down to Tesco to replace a broken glass or a chipped plate. People repaired things. People reused things. So what were these still doing here?

I poked around a bit more, and found various other articles forgotten by time: a hair comb of yellowed bone, an iron pot, a set of copper syrinx pipes.

I wasn’t surprised when I heard Jay calling my name.

‘Let me guess,’ I said, going to the door. ‘You’ve found dead people.’

‘They’re just — lying there.’ He looked disturbed. Agitated. He gestured, sweepingly, towards a couple of houses across the street. ‘Like they lay down in bed and nobody ever came back for them.’

‘They look… pained,’ Indira added, coming up behind Jay. ‘Like they suffered.’

I exited the cottage and took several long steps away from it, as though I could leave the terrible vision of its owner’s last moments behind me. ‘Same story in there. The house is full of stuff. I think you’re right, Jay. No one ever did come back for them.’

I looked around for Zareen, but couldn’t see her.

Em, though. She’d wandered away from her original spot, was coming towards us. Her face was drawn, ashen. I waited, sickened, for her insight.

‘There isn’t much left to find,’ she said when she reached us. ‘But there are traces of big magick.’

‘Big, bad magick,’ I guessed.

She nodded. ‘I’ve come across something like this once before.’ She stopped.

We waited, but she only frowned, troubled.

‘Where?’ I finally prompted.

She sighed. ‘There was a village in the Rhine valley. Lassenthaler. Some kind of feud got out of hand, and… someone worked a hex.’

‘A hex?’ I stared. ‘I didn’t know — is that even possible?’

Her mouth twisted, half wry, half disgusted. ‘They don’t teach it at the Hidden University, Ves. You can see why. This is what a hex does.’ She gestured around at the dead and rotting village of Silvessen, littered with the bones and abandoned possessions of its inhabitants.

Of course, nobody had come back for them. There’d been no one left to come back for them.

‘A hex can be like a curse of misfortune,’ Emellana continued. ‘You can twist somebody until they destroy themselves, they can’t help it. Or it can be like — this. A kind of plague. Far more contagious than any natural plague, because it’s baked into the bricks of every house in the village. It cannot be avoided. And it kills.’

Silence followed Emellana’s revelations. I didn’t know what to say. My mind shied away from the enormity of what somebody had done to Silvessen.

‘Why would somebody do that?’ Indira finally said. Her voice was very quiet, like she felt compelled to ask the question but did not really want to think about the answer.

‘Some people are abominations.’ Emellana’s answer was rather short, almost snapped. She didn’t want to think about it, either.

I physically shook myself. ‘Right. We need to move on.’

‘Ves,’ said Jay. ‘No. We need to do something about this.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘We can’t just leave all these poor people here. They should be — buried, or something. Laid to rest. And we will. But we can’t do that in the next hour.’

He sighed, and cast a last, lingering look at the cottage he and Indira had explored. ‘I suppose we’ll never know who did it, or why.’

I wasn’t so sure. My mind had wandered back to the glaistigs at the big house. Their state made a lot more sense, now. They were spirits who hadn’t departed the way they were supposed to — however that worked — because they’d had too much bitterness, too much rage. And they had a right to that rage.

But I wondered. They were some of the victims of this tragedy — weren’t they?

Was the perpetrator lurking up there, too?

‘We should be careful,’ I said.

Jay looked at me like I’d just announced an intention to quit the Society and take up a new life as a legal secretary, or possibly a call centre operative. ‘Careful?’ he repeated. ‘You?’

I scowled. ‘I do caution.’

‘When?’

‘Right now. We’re going back up there and we’ll be all kinds of cautious.’

‘Ves. Going back there is the opposite of cautious. You can see how that works, right?’

Apparently my dark little thought had occurred to Jay, too. ‘We’re going to need their permission to bury these people,’ I pointed out. ‘Some of these remains probably belong to them.’

Jay gave that sigh he does when I’m right, and he’s annoyed about it. ‘Fine. One question to go.’

‘First we need Zar—’

‘Right here,’ came Zareen’s voice. Sort of. It had a hollow quality to it that I didn’t like, and a coarseness. She didn’t speak so much as she rasped, and something about it made my skin prickle.

I turned around with pounding heart.

I take back what I said before. I’m not getting used to the way Zareen looks when she’s deep in the Stranger Arts, and I never, ever will.

‘Where’ve you been,’ I croaked.

She smiled, and I wished she wouldn’t. She looked like she had just crawled out of her own grave, having been down there quite some time: skeletal and bone-pale, her dark hair wreathing her head like black smoke, eyes dark, deeply sunken hollows. Her smile was a death’s head grimace.

‘I’ve been having a chat with the fine people of Silvessen,’ she said in answer.

‘You found them.’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ The smile stretched.

I shuddered. ‘Zar, I can’t express how much I respect your work, but you’re scary beyond all reason.’

‘I know.’ She smirked.

‘Em thinks Silvessen was hexed.’

‘She’s right. Nasty stuff.’

‘Okay. So we’ll do something important and respectful about that soon, but for now, we’ve answered question two.’

‘Maybe,’ said Indira.

Everyone looked at her, which made her so uncomfortable she transferred her own gaze to her feet.

‘Maybe?’ I prompted.

‘It’s just that it’s odd phrasing,’ she informed her shoes. ‘A more natural way to phrase the question might have been: “What happened to Silvessen?” Or, “What became of the town?” But she said: “How did Silvessen die?”

‘True,’ said Jay, frowning. ‘You don’t normally talk about a town’s having died. You say that about a person.’

Indira nodded.

‘So you think it’s a trick question,’ I concluded. ‘She wasn’t talking about the town. She was talking about a person the town was named after.’

‘Somebody important,’ Emellana said. ‘Somebody who would live in the best house.’

‘The biggest one,’ I sighed. ‘The really haunted one.’

‘Social leaders are also spokespeople,’ Jay suggested. ‘They take the lead.’

Zareen grinned. ‘Yeah. I think we’ve met her.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘it’s time to go talk to her again.’

***

‘We’re ready,’ I said, half an hour later.

We’d made it back to the ballroom with mere minutes to spare. The house hadn’t wanted to let us back in; the front door was locked, and no amount of pounding upon it or jiggling the handle had made any difference. Closed.

Just when I’d begun to wonder if we’d been played — that first question hadn’t been a question at all, merely a means of getting us out of the building — Indira found a side door that swung open at a touch. On the other side of it was the ballroom.

My words echoed in the empty air, settling like dust.

The air shimmered, and the glaistig appeared. The ghost of Silvessen?

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘The first question: which door leads outside?’

I pointed at the door through which we’d entered. It still stood open, revealing the dead earth beyond.

She didn’t blink. ‘The second. How did Silvessen die?’

She died from a hex,’ I answered.

No reaction to that, either. ‘The third. What am I thinking?’

‘To that question, I have several answers,’ I replied. ‘You’re thinking that we are a cursed nuisance and you would like us to leave, but also that we make a convenient stand-in for whoever worked that hex and you’d like to torture us a bit more, too. You’re thinking that the world and everyone in it owes you something for the injustice of your death, and that of your townspeople. And in all of the above points, you’re right. More or less. There has been a terrible injustice done you, and we have been pretty annoying.’

No response. Silvessen, if it was she, stared at me in silence.

‘Besides that,’ I continued, unfazed. ‘You’re thinking that when I said a contest of physical prowess I meant a fight. With weapons. Possibly to the death. And you liked that idea, because the angry part of you really wants an excuse to hurt somebody.’

Finally: a reaction. Her features tightened, as though a frown or a grimace were suppressed. ‘And was I right in that, as well?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid not.’

She inclined her head, seemingly an admission of defeat. ‘Well, then. In what way am I to be challenged?’

I smiled, removing my thick winter coat, and hurled it at the nearest wall. ‘I challenge you,’ I said, raising my voice, so the syllables echoed off the bare, mouldy walls. ‘To a dance-off.’

Dancing and Disaster: 12

‘A game?’ Jay echoed. Released from my mental grip, he took a quick step back from me, shaking his head.

I felt a stab of guilt, and tried an apologetic smile. Jay didn’t smile back.

Note to self, Ves: don’t push your friends around. Ever.

I set the thought aside. ‘A game,’ I repeated. It was a gamble, I admit, but at least maybe we could all get out of this without bloodshed. Or defeat. ‘Winner takes all,’ I added, recklessly.

The fae often like games. I don’t mean cute parlour games like Charades, or a round of Cluedo. The fae — some of them — enjoy risky games with difficult win conditions and high stakes. Beating them at any game they’d consent to play wouldn’t be easy.

But they also tended to be sticklers for honour. If we could pull it off, they’d fulfil any win conditions set.

I certainly had the attention of the glaistigs, though they didn’t speak. All four of them watched me with their pallid eyes, still and focused as a predator stalking defenceless prey…

Jay’s face clearly said: I hope you know what you’re doing, Ves.

I hoped so, too. But I thought of the tricks and stratagems they’d displayed so far — waltzing, for heaven’s sake — and thought that maybe I was on the right track.

They seemed to like playing games.

‘If we win,’ I went on, ‘You consent to let us leave without further interference, and we’re permitted to test our device in the village before we go home.’

The glaistigs didn’t move.

‘If you win,’ I continued, ‘You can do with us whatever you like.’

‘Ves.’ Emellana uttered my name low, warningly. Too late. I could only shrug. I’d committed us, and I’d done so with the fullest confidence that my team could beat these creatures at any conceivable game. There hadn’t really been the option to talk it over first.

And it was still better than a pitched battle. Right?

‘One more thing,’ I added, as the glaistigs stirred. ‘In any duel of honour, the challenged party gets to choose the method of combat. And since we were subjected to an unprovoked attack, and have yet to level any harm whatsoever in return, that privilege is ours.’

Zareen folded her arms. Her expression was hard, unreadable, but her attention was focused on the glaistigs. Emellana had closed up, too, hiding any further thoughts she was experiencing as to my reckless gambit.

Indira and Jay were stoic. I chose to interpret this as support.

‘Not so,’ said the glaistig, the chatty one. ‘You trespassed.’

‘Unknowingly,’ I said quickly. ‘We thought the house empty, because you hid yourselves from us.’

They muttered at this, and a chill wind wafted past my face. I tried not to let my deepening unease show on my face.

‘You trespassed,’ said the glaistig again.

‘Fine. Then there shall be two events, one to be chosen by each party.’

More muttering. More rage.

I stood my ground, and waited.

‘We agree,’ said the glaistig at last.

‘Excellent.’ I beamed, trying not to imagine what they might like to do with us if we lost. ‘What, then, is your choice?’

‘A contest of wits,’ came the answer, though it was not the same glaistig who spoke. This one stood to my right, and came drifting nearer, smiling in ominous fashion. The expression stretched her face too wide.

‘Then our choice shall be a contest of physical valour,’ I countered.

‘Done.’

‘What if it’s a draw?’ asked Jay. ‘We each lose one and win one.’

‘It won’t be a draw.’ I smiled with as much palpable confidence as I could muster. It couldn’t be a draw. We needed to win, decisively enough to leave no doubt in the minds of these ghostly ladies that we’d bested them fair and square. Or there’d be complications, and I hate that.

Jay only sighed.

‘Well then, shall we begin?’ I directed my smile at the more talkative of the glaistigs, and waited.

She did not immediately answer. Instead, she drew herself up to her full height — rather more considerable than mine, though she was shorter than Emellana. I mean, who isn’t?

Something was changing about her. She grew, steadily, less ethereal; more solid; the tattery blue gown mended its rips and rents before my eyes, and knitted itself back into the semblance of a whole, respectable garment. Her hair ceased to toss in an invisible breeze, hanging straight and black around a face no longer withered and weathered with time.

Before me stood a woman who was, unmistakeably, Yllanfalen.

The same transformation took place among her companions, and I mentally rearranged my ideas as to the nature of Silvessen. It had been an Yllanfalen town. Interesting.

Lucky I hadn’t declared a musical contest, although we did have Jay…

‘A contest of wits,’ said the tall Yllanfalen. Her voice had ceased to hiss and slither; now it was ringing and clear. ‘Questions, then.’

By which she meant: riddles. Inevitably. I suppressed a sigh. Fae and their riddles.

‘To win, you must answer three questions to our satisfaction,’ she continued. ‘If you fail to answer all three, the contest is forfeit.’

‘We accept,’ came the answer, though for once it wasn’t from me. It was Indira who spoke, and she uttered the words with every bit as much confidence as our challenger. She’d drawn herself up, too, even if her height wasn’t so imposing, and stood with her chin high.

Interestingly, her dress had also mended itself.

I shot a look at Jay, containing a question. Is she good at riddles?

The tiny smirk I received in reply proved answer enough.

A little of my tension eased.

‘Very well. Then: listen.’ Our challenger looked at each of us in turn. ‘Your first question. Which door leads outside?’

I opened my mouth, foolishly; the answer seemed obvious, therefore it must be anything but.

Even as I framed the thought, the single door set into the far wall became two, then three, then more… the only thing I could feel certain of was: the original door was no longer the exit.

‘I suppose we can’t answer that by just trying them,’ I hazarded.

‘The first door you touch is your chosen answer,’ she replied.

‘Right.’

Indira spoke up. ‘Do you mean outside as in, out of this room? Or outside as in, out of the building?’

‘The latter.’ The words emerged snappishly; our questions were irritating our challenger.

‘Your second question,’ continued the glaistig. ‘How did Silvessen die?’

Not a riddle, then, but a question. A mystery. Unexpected.

‘Your third question: what am I thinking?’

Impossible to answer. The triumphant glint in our opponent’s eyes told me she knew it, too.

I looked at Indira. Her confidence hadn’t flickered.

I took heart.

‘We will require time to confer,’ I said.

‘You have one hour.’ With these words, the glaistig faded away, together with her companions.

We were left alone in the ballroom.

The silence lengthened.

‘Ves,’ Zareen said at last. ‘I’d ask if you’re sure about this, but it’s a bit late, isn’t it?’

‘I am sure,’ I said anyway. ‘We’ve got this.’

‘Might’ve been easier to just leave and pick a new ghost town.’

‘Might have,’ I agreed. ‘But probably not. Couple of hours, and we’ll be out of here.’

She answered only with a sour look, which I decided to interpret as concurrence.

‘So,’ I said, mostly to Indira. ‘We have a history quest, which we like.’

‘I do like history quests,’ she allowed.

‘To solve question two, we first need to get out of here, which means solving question one.’ I smiled hopefully.

‘And question three?’ Emellana put in. ‘That’s the deal-breaker.’

‘I’ll handle question three,’ I answered.

‘How?’

‘By wily means.’

‘In other words, cheating,’ said Jay.

‘Probably. But they cheated by giving us an unanswerable question, so I’d say all’s fair.’

Indira ignored the conversation. Her quick gaze was busy with the doors, all twelve of them.

‘The problem,’ she observed, ‘is: there aren’t any clues.’

True. Each door was identical to all the others: tall, wrought from dark wooden boards and set into stone frames with rounded arches. They all bore a heavy iron handle on the left side.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask.’

That won me a mystified look from more than just Indira, but we didn’t have time for a long conversation about it just then. I closed my eyes, tuned out my esteemed colleagues, and focused on the house.

I tried asking directly. Which door would take us outside? I layered the question with visions of fresh air, mud underfoot, and the scents of grass and leaf-mould.

Either the house didn’t understand me, or it didn’t choose to answer. Maybe it favoured the glaistigs. They’d been living here a while, presumably.

So I listened, instead. Go deep, Ves, Ophelia had said, and it had worked before.

I sat down, and dived deep into the stones of the haunted house. The air curled in sluggish gusts, stale; no one had opened a window in many a year. No one had needed to.

I drifted along with it, wafting past door after door. Did I detect a fresher note somewhere? A hint of a brisk breeze streaming under the boards…

No. It wasn’t going to be that simple, either.

Words pierced my awareness. Indira. ‘The first door you touch is your choice,’ she was saying. ‘Can we open them without touching them?

A thought. A good one.

I caught up a current of air and fashioned it into a shape of my liking: a beguiling tendril, a flexible tool in my hands.

Away drifted my tendril, and tackled the nearest door. The latch clicked open.

I caught up all the air in the room, and sent it sailing after.

The door groaned as it slowly swung open.

I did not pause to survey the effects of my efforts; I still had eleven doors to open. No easy task, this. My focus fractured after the sixth, and only by ferocious effort of will could I bring my mind back to bear.

Five more, then three…

When I opened my eyes, all twelve doors stood open, and my four companions were staring at me with some perplexity.

‘How did you do that?’ Emellana asked.

‘I magicked it up out of thin air,’ I answered. Literally true.

This meant something to Em, though. She nodded, studying my face with interest. ‘You look a little different,’ said she.

‘I… do?’ I patted my hair, looked down at my clothes. No discernible change.

‘Your skin looks…’

Jay finished the sentence for her. ‘Stony.’

Stony? Had I become one with the house so thoroughly that I was starting to meld with it?

Hideous thought. Also, considering what had happened with the Fairy Stone, interesting.

‘It’ll get better,’ I said, with a confidence I had no reason to feel. Now wasn’t the time either to explore that idea or to panic about it. My skin would have to remember what a Ves looks like on its own.

‘Merlin stuff?’ Zareen asked.

‘Presumably. It’s hard to tell.’ Which was true. It’s not like Merlin’s borrowed powers had awarded me some kind of a magickal toolbox I could draw from at will. I could no longer tell where my magickal efforts were coming from; I was just doing different things. Sometimes.

My peculiar efforts had paid off, this time: one of the dozen doors opened onto a barren field of scrubby grass, and in the near distance, the houses of Silvessen.

‘One question down,’ I said, satisfied. ‘Next.’

‘How did Silvessen die.’ Emellana shook her head. ‘There’s so rarely a single reason why a settlement, or a civilisation, fails. The contributing factors are usually myriad, and complex. Understanding them requires far more research than we can accomplish in an hour.’

‘Another unanswerable question, then,’ said Zareen. ‘I think we’ve been tricked.’

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘I mean, there is probably a trick in there somewhere.’

Silence fell. We were all looking at Indira.

‘I have an idea about that,’ she said. ‘But nothing to suggest it might be correct. Did anyone find a library anywhere?’

Jay rolled his eyes. ‘You mean while we were wandering around stewing in our own fears? No.’

‘I did,’ said Emellana. ‘If you could call it that. Only a few volumes survive, and they’re mostly rotted away.’

I thought about consulting Mauf, but discarded the idea. He’d already been consulted, and had uncovered barely anything about Silvessen. Only Sumla of Witheridge’s account of it as ‘a deathly place’, which sounded accurate to me. Plus something about a wand-wright.

‘No library,’ I mused aloud. ‘And no help from Mauf. How do we solve a mystery without books, team?’

‘I hope that isn’t just a hypothetical question,’ said Jay.

‘It’s not. It’s time for a thrilling exercise in impromptu field archaeology.’ I marched towards the door showing us the view of Silvessen; it was probably only ten minutes’ walk from here. Maybe less.

‘We don’t have time for a lot of digging,’ Jay pointed out, but he did follow me.

‘No, true. We’ll have to rely on what we can see above ground.’

‘We do have me,’ Emellana remarked.

Right. Em and her capacity to sense traces of past magicks. ‘You think there might be some magickal reason why Silvessen died?’ I asked.

‘It’s a recurring theme lately.’

‘True,’ I allowed. She was referring to Farringale, plus a few other troll Enclaves that had been choked out by the parasitical ortherex. ‘But this isn’t a troll settlement.’ We could be certain of that. The houses we’d passed in the village were nowhere near large enough, nor did they exhibit any recognisable features of troll architecture.

‘Nonetheless, it’s a possibility,’ Em replied, which was true.

‘Zar,’ I said, as we set off across the rough, half-frozen earth between us and Silvessen. ‘Let us know if you can sense any more lingering spirits somewhere out here.’

‘Didn’t before, but I can try.’

Indira said nothing, which wasn’t unusual. I didn’t press her about the idea she’d mentioned. she didn’t like to hazard guesses unless they were likely to prove correct; I’d noticed this before. Perfectionism, of a sort. She’d tell us when she had evidence, and that had to be good enough.

Back in Silvessen, we gathered in a ragged knot in the middle of the main street, glancing uncertainly at the still and silent houses in their dejected, tumble-down rows. I checked the time. Twenty-two minutes had passed since the challenge began, and we’d need ten minutes to get back to the house. Less than half an hour to investigate.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘This is one time when it makes sense to split up.’

Jay didn’t oppose me, for once. ‘We’ll go this way,’ he announced, drawing Indira towards the tallest building in the street: a cottage of two complete storeys, the roof mostly fallen in.

Zareen set off in the opposite direction, and Emellana chose to stay where she was. Her eyes were closed. I figured she was communing with the remains of long-faded magicks, and let her be.

I picked a little house with crooked oak beams and gaping windows like lachrymose eyes, and headed for the doorway. Less than half of the door remained, hanging limply from rusted hinges. I stepped over it, and went inside.

I was immediately struck by the strangeness of the place. The remains of furniture were in evidence, albeit of a simple kind: plain oak construction, any upholstery long rotted away. A low table took pride of place in the single chamber, a pair of chairs accompanying it. One of these was pushed back, as if someone had but lately risen from it. But the quantity of dust and mould everywhere told me that couldn’t be the case.

At the rear of the room, an oaken frame suggested the erstwhile presence of a simple bed. Time had reduced the mattress and blankets to a decayed and indeterminate mass; in the gloom, I could distinguish little clearly.

It took me a long moment before I realised, with a thrill of horror, that the bed’s long-dead occupant was still in it.

Dancing and Disaster: 11

‘Em?’ I choked, for seldom have I beheld so unsettling a sight. All seven or eight feet of her was wobbly around the edges and… and dripping. Like slime.

She was smiling, though. I suppose that was something.

‘Uhm,’ said Jay. ‘Zareen? Any ideas?’

‘Oh, because I’m the local authority on troll-slime,’ she muttered.

‘You’re the local authority on weird,’ Jay hissed.

Em still hadn’t said anything. Once she’d finished sliming her way through the wall, she solidified again. Sort of.

I walked over to her, admittedly with some caution. When I prodded her arm, my finger sank in up to the knuckle.

‘Feels like jelly,’ I reported.

‘Methinks this isn’t Em,’ said Jay.

Zareen, her attention caught, began circling the semblance of Emellana Rogan with narrowed eyes. There was something wolf-like about her gait, predatory, as though she were a carnivore in sight of a rabbit.

‘Lady and gentleman,’ she said, presumably to me and Jay. ‘I would strongly advise you not to show any fear.’

That’s like being told, on pain of death, to relax. Zareen’s words filled me with a terror I’d barely been aware of before, and I couldn’t speak through my efforts to swallow it down again.

A glance at Jay revealed a similar struggle etched upon his face.

‘Super helpful, thanks,’ he said weakly.

The slime that wasn’t Em appeared to have tired of us, for it/she began fading back through the wall again. I averted mine eyes. It really wasn’t a pretty sight.

Neither was the vision of Indira that followed, bubbling up from the floor not far from where Jay stood. She solidified just long enough to manifest an expression of indescribable evil before dribbling away again, and vanished without trace.

Jay was definitely looking unnerved now. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean they’re—’ he began, and stopped.

‘They’re fine,’ I said briskly. ‘They’re very capable people and they certainly aren’t dead. Though I have to wonder how you four came to split up.’ Jay had once lectured me on the adage of “never split the party”, and he had a point.

‘Didn’t mean to,’ said Jay, never taking his eyes from the spot in which Indira had appeared.

Zareen was prowling the room, staring daggers at the walls. ‘Tricks,’ she said. ‘Whoever these jokers are, they’re good.’

My reply was forestalled by a new sound, and a most unexpected one at that.

Nothing horrific, as you might imagine. Screams in the night? Terrified gibbering? The bloodthirsty howls of rabid beasts bent on our destruction? At that point, nothing along those lines would have surprised me.

What I heard instead was the delicate strains of a violin, playing a single, haunting note.

Jay’s head came up.

Zareen chuckled. ‘You’re up, Jay,’ she said.

‘Hey, just because I’m a musician doesn’t mean I have any idea what’s going on here.’

‘Now you know how I feel.’

‘Fair.’ Jay folded his arms, and stared up at the balcony.

He was right: the music was coming from up there. As we listened, the melody expanded: two violins, then three, playing together in what ought to have been delightful harmony. There was a slight wrongness to it, though, a subtle discordancy that sent me into shivers.

Three ethereal violins were, apparently, playing themselves.

The tune was a dreamy waltz, lilting and compelling; my feet began to move. So did Jay’s.

‘Ves,’ came Zareen’s voice, low and urgent, but I barely heard her. Jay swept me up in his arms and we were gone, swirling around the room in a haze of melody and magick. It seemed that the ballroom changed around me: gone were the cobwebs and the mould and the shattered glass, away went the gloom and the decrepitude. The floor firmed beneath my feet, the walls rippled into gilded colour, and golden light blazed.

My jeans vanished in favour of an airy ballgown of purple silk, and a slight weight atop my head alerted me to the presence of a tiara.

Jay looked damned fine in a dark blue tuxedo. I beamed at him, delirious with music and romance—

VES!

Something crashed, and something hurt, and the dream ended.

Zareen had thrown something at me. There being a dearth of suitable missiles to hand in this draughty chamber, she’d employed one of her own shoes for the purpose: a boot, in fact, and hefty. My shoulder twinged with pain where it had connected with my flesh.

That wasn’t what had caused the crash, though. The balcony had split into two pieces, only one of which remained aloft. The other lay in shattered fragments all over the parquet floor.

I noticed, sadly, that my swirly dress had turned back into jeans. Even more sadly, Jay’s suit was gone, too.

‘Did you do that?’ I asked Zareen, pointing at the wreck of the balcony.

‘No,’ she said tightly. ‘What the hell were you two doing?’

Jay and I exchanged an uneasy glance. What had we been doing?

‘Dancing?’ I offered.

‘Waltzing, actually,’ put in Jay.

‘Lovely,’ said Zareen, her voice dripping scorn. ‘How about a nice foxtrot next?’

I looked up. The three violins were still up there, playing on, oblivious to the damage.

‘They’re compelling,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t resist.’

Zareen rolled her eyes. ‘All right, let me introduce you to Haunted Houses 101. Which is entry-level stuff at the School of Weird, but apparently they don’t teach that at regular school.’

‘Can’t think why,’ muttered Jay.

‘First rule of Haunted Houses: do not show fear.’ She bawled the words at us, sharp as the crack of a whip, and I jumped.

Fail,’ she barked, pointing at me.

‘Sorry.’

‘Second rule of Haunted Houses: Irresistible Compulsions must at all costs be resisted.

‘So… no dancing,’ I concluded.

No dancing. Why? Because the next Irresistible Compulsion might consist of choking your best friend to death or putting a sharp blade through your partner’s entrails and we wouldn’t want to do nasty things like that, now would we?’

I revise my previous ideas as to Zareen’s probable destiny. She’ll be Headmistress of the School of Weird inside of a decade, and then Giddy Gods help the students.

‘No, Miss,’ I said hastily. ‘Sorry, Miss.’

The waltz ended, and instead of violins we were apparently getting fiddles next, for the tune they struck up was — well, irresistible. I bopped a bit, and hurriedly stopped under the force of Zareen’s glare.

‘What’s rule three?’ Jay asked.

‘Get the hell out.’

‘Fail,’ I said.

‘Fail,’ she agreed. ‘More fool we.’ She smiled, slightly, which proved a chilling expression considering that the whites of her eyes were filling in with black again.

‘Zar, what are you doing?’

‘Trying something. By the way, Merlin, you’re not being much help in here, I’ll say that.’

Ouch.

She wasn’t wrong. As the wielder of ancient and fathomlessly powerful magicks, I ought to be less pervious to ghostly suggestion, oughtn’t I?

‘We haven’t covered the chapter on hauntings yet,’ I protested.

‘Doesn’t matter. Make it up.’

A door opened with a creak, and in floated Indira.

The three of us stared at her in silence.

She stared back.

When I say “floated” I do mean that literally. She hovered several inches off the ground, and considering her youthfully lithe frame, she was looking somewhat ghostly.

That and she’d had a costume change, too. Her practical trousers-and-parka combo had gone, perhaps forever. Instead, she wore a trailing gown of ragged lace, dyed an ethereal blue.

‘Nice dress,’ I approved.

‘It isn’t mine.’

I looked at Jay. If anybody could tell if this was the real Indira or not, it ought to be her brother.

‘Were you here earlier?’ he asked.

Being Indira, she thought about the question before she answered it, examining the contours of the ballroom with a keen attention. That more than anything else convinced me she was, indeed, she. ‘I don’t think so,’ she decided. ‘Did you see me?’

‘Sort of. You, um, came up out of the floor.’ Jay made an expressive, bubbling-up gesture with his hands.

Indira’s eyebrows climbed. ‘No. I certainly didn’t do… that.’

Jay perceptibly relaxed. ‘Far too messy,’ he agreed, grinning at her. ‘Where were you?’

‘The kitchen.’

‘With the candlestick? Or the revolver.’

‘The rope, Colonel Mustard.’

‘I don’t know, I’m in more of a Professor Plum mood.’

I lost track of what happened next. Zareen’s comment rankled, particularly since she was right. I should be using those Merlin skills I’d so cleverly persuaded out of Ophelia, or what were they even for?

I didn’t know what to do, but so what. Make it up.

I was good at that.

What would Ophelia tell me to do?

Go deep.

All right, then. Look past the surface and what do I find beneath?

For one: remarkably lively house. I’m used to unusually animated architecture, so doors opening and closing by themselves, or transporting people to unexpected places, doesn’t register with me as strange. But it is strange. There’s nothing in mere bricks and mortar that can account for that, even with magick.

That’s because this level of animation requires some semblance of sentience. You don’t get that with a brick.

So there was a mind in there. Possibly several.

Now, it might be that the glaistigs Zareen mentioned were operating the house, too.

Or it might be that some other entity entirely was involved.

Either way, I was growing tired of waiting for them to show themselves.

I sat down, and laid one palm against the floor, the other against the wall. I closed my eyes, tuning out the sounds of Zareen, Indira and Jay debating a suitable next move, and listened.

It’s not easy to listen deeply to a house. They don’t talk in the ways we’re used to. Theirs is a language of creaking doors and swaying drapes; the slow mesmerism of settling dust; the whispers of passage, a thunderous step, a window slamming closed in a gust of wind. The chill of rainwater on cold glass; the parched glow of summer heat on brick and stone. The dreams of ancient beams cut from long-vanished forests…

My breathing eased, and I relaxed. Really, it’s quite peaceful being a house. Except for the sharp babble of voices, lancing through the silence like splinters of wood; shouting, even screaming; the shuddering crash as wood rots away and falls…

Oh. It had occurred to me that we’d broken in upon the glaistigs, if such they were, and without invitation. It hadn’t occurred to me that we’d irritated the house, too.

I’m sorry.

I formed the thought in feelings, not in words, for the house comprehended nothing of our babbling tongues.

My soft bubble of regret and penitence was not rejected.

I etched a vision of our packing up and going away, emphasising soon.

Then I asked a question.

The answer came swiftly.

‘Aha.’ I stood up, opening my eyes, and turned. My concentration shattered; my tenuous link with the house vanished.

But I had what I needed.

‘Zar,’ I said.

She was standing near the opposite wall, her eyes entirely black, with both hands spread against the mould-ridden plaster. As I neared, I saw that the tips of her fingers had sunk into the wall.

‘Not now, Ves,’ she muttered. ‘I’m trying to—’

She stopped, because I’d thrust out an arm and sunk my hand into the wall, right up to the wrist.

When I drew it out, I had a glaistig by the hair.

‘Oops,’ I said hurriedly, and let go. ‘Sorry. That was ruder than I intended.’

The glaistig regarded me balefully. She was no pretty sight: thin as a wisp of wind and white as ice, her eyes dark holes gaping in her drawn face. She wore a dress almost identical to Indira’s, tattered lace and ghostly blue.

‘Indira, where’d you get the dress?’ I called.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, coming over. She stopped at my shoulder, and stared at our glaistig friend in some horror.

‘I think you’ve been volunteered to join the team,’ I said.

‘Over my dead body.’ Jay came up on my other side, arms folded.

‘Over hers, more likely,’ I remarked. ‘Let’s not do that.’

‘Pity,’ sighed Zareen. ‘It looks damn good.’

‘Top marks for style,’ I agreed. ‘Serious demerits for attitude.’

The glaistig fluttered, as though tossed in a strong breeze. The shattering winds of her own rage and resentment, probably. She glared.

‘Leave,’ she hissed.

Suddenly, she flew at me, hands outstretched, reaching for my face. Her nails were talons, cracked and bleeding.

I hadn’t expected it, hadn’t had time to react; I jumped back, but too slow, half fell over my own feet—

Jay caught me.

And then Zareen was there, bone-white and gaunt, jet-black and horrifying. She hissed a word, low and guttural, and the glaistig stopped dead. The apparition hung there, as though Zareen had reached out a hand and grabbed the back of her dress.

Zareen hadn’t moved.

‘I can’t hold her forever,’ she said, and the strain in her voice told me enough. ‘I certainly can’t hold all of them.’

‘All of them?’ Jay echoed, turning wildly about. A second glaistig seeped through the wall on the other side of the room, spitting fury, and a third materialised behind Indira.

The far door flew open with a crash, and in stalked Emellana, towing a fourth apparition in a white-knuckled grip.

‘I don’t like these people,’ she informed us.

I wondered what visions of horror the glaistigs had used to torment Emellana. Then I took a closer look at her face, white-lipped with fury, and decided I didn’t want to know.

Zareen moved. She reached out an arm towards the glaistig stalking Indira, and the apparition halted, progress arrested. But she fought, and Zareen was overtaxed.

Indira retrieved her Wand, and raised it. ‘Jay,’ she called.

The Patel siblings were a daunting force individually. Together, they were truly formidable.

Especially with an enraged Emellana and an angry, desperate Zareen to back them up.

We were heading for carnage.

It would be a conflict we’d probably win, but at what cost?

To us — and to the glaistigs?

After all, sometimes the enraged, homicidal ghost has legitimate grievances.

‘Okay, stop,’ I shouted. ‘Stop. Everybody stop.’

They stopped. All of them.

Not because I’d asked. Because I’d compelled.

I’d reached out to each mind around me and pushed. Hard.

Jay froze, wide-eyed, staring at me. Indira’s stare was appalled.

Emellana and Zareen were angry.

I didn’t look too long at the glaistigs.

‘Right,’ I said hastily. ‘Sorry, that was a bit more forceful than I intended. Or even, um, knew that I could pull off, and I’ll try not to keep doing it, I promise. Brownie’s Honour. But if we could all just calm down for a second, maybe we could talk.’

‘Talk?’ hissed Zareen. ‘We tried that. Remember?’

‘Yes, but attempting to hold a conversation with empty air is an exercise in futility. At least our friendly neighbourhood tormentors are here now.’ I smiled brightly at the nearest glaistig. ‘Hello. My name is Ves. These are my colleagues: Zareen, Jay, Indira and Emellana. We’re here on assignment from the Society for the Preservation of Magickal Heritage and it’s very important. I understand you’re angry about something. Perhaps we can help?’

The glaistig merely snarled. ‘Leave,’ she hissed again.

‘We will. Soon. But first we’d really appreciate permission to carry out a project in town—’

This perfectly reasonable request was answered with a furious roar, and a violent attempt to break free of my arrest.

It almost worked. They were strong. I couldn’t hold them forever, any more than Zareen could.

‘Diplomacy isn’t working,’ Emellana observed, in a voice of dangerous calm. ‘We’re wasting time.’

I thought fast. All right, I couldn’t get what we needed by asking nicely, and I didn’t want to beat it out of the glaistigs. Supposing we even could. That went rather against the grain.

Time to try something else.

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘let’s play a game.’

Dancing and Disaster: 10

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so alone in my life. The silence was so profound, I might have been the only person on the planet, never mind in the room. The darkness was absolute, save for a faint glimmer of pale, sickly light here and there, showing me where to go. I felt frozen to the marrow of my bones, shivering as I stepped forward.

I was hoping my esteemed colleagues might follow my example and take the bull by the horns, so to speak.

Failing that, I was hoping they might choose to come with me. You know, to back me up.

But nothing broke that terrible, depthless silence, and I knew I was alone. Not even Jay had followed me.

I wasted a moment in pointless self-pity as I pictured my companions piling out of the hole Jay would shortly open in the front door, leaving me behind. Following which, they would go back to their bright, sunny lives, full of purpose and potential and loved ones, and forget me entirely.

Jay would marry the girl he’d been dating and wouldn’t talk about, and produce the next generation of impossibly talented, slightly Ylanfallen children. Indira would become the head of the Hidden University by the age of twenty-five, after which she would take over the planet and rule (benignly) as Empress of Everything. Emellana would embark upon a fresh slew of exciting adventures, adding to the already living legend that she was, and Zareen… Zareen would kick George Mercer out of her life once and for all (if she hadn’t already), become a stable, healthy human being, and go on to exorcise many another irate spirit or enraged poltergeist.

I, meanwhile, would be stuck in here forever, alone and unregretted, which was probably what I deserved…

A tear slid down my cheek. I’d stopped walking at some point and stood with my arms hanging down and head lowered, helpless and hopeless.

Which really isn’t like me.

My chin came up. ‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘You’re okay, Ves. You may not be married with kids or the Empress of Everything, but you live a life full of meaning and your hair is truly excellent. And your friends love you and would never leave you behind.’ I thought for a second. That about covered everything.

The feelings of bleak hopelessness faded a little.

‘Okay!’ I said louder. ‘Nice try, but it didn’t work.’

A soft sigh of wind gusted past me, a hollow sound, which, by way of courtesy, brought a freezing chill with it. I began to shiver, but at least the terrible weight of my own black self-pity disappeared.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘While we’re talking, perhaps somebody would like to explain to me what you’ve done with Jay.’

A mote of light appeared before me, and spread, rippling like water. A vision shimmered there: Jay as I’d last seen him, cross-legged on the floor in the echoing hall and enjoying a custard cream. But as I watched, something changed, and I realised this wasn’t quite my Jay. He was looking at me with an expression of such utter exasperation, one might even term it… contempt. I could practically see the thoughts passing behind his dark eyes: What a fatuous idiot. Serving biscuits and chatting when there’s a severe threat to deal with. I can’t wait to leave this fool behind and move on to better things.

I might have flinched a little.

I’m fairly sure Jay didn’t take me very seriously when we first met. I was colourful and jaunty and fabulously dressed and I don’t think Jay associated any of those things with competence or skill.

But that didn’t last long.

‘Still doesn’t work,’ I said, raising my voice. ‘Where is he?’

The vision rippled, and changed. Jay was striding down a shadowy corridor, its walls painted white and streaked with something dark. A light flickered oddly ahead of him, bobbed and danced, emanating a shimmery, shivery ghost-light: some kind of will-o’-wisp. He was following in its train, eyes fixed upon it, and as I watched, a nothingness opened in the floor before him, fathomlessly black.

He walked straight into it, and disappeared.

I heard him scream.

‘I doubt it,’ I said, as stoutly as I could manage. The vision was more persuasive than I liked.

I was shown an alternative. Jay found a door leading outside, but when it opened, he was several floors up. He didn’t seem to notice, but stepped over the threshold — and fell, screaming. I watched as he hit the hard, frosted ground and the scream abruptly cut off.

Another alternative. Jay exploring some kind of ballroom, a big, echoey chamber with a begrimed, tiled floor and a dark-painted balcony for a long-vanished orchestra. As he stepped forward, the balcony wobbled and fell, crushing him underneath.

Another. Jay had found the house’s kitchens, and was poking industriously into cobweb-ridden cupboards streaked with soot. A hellish wight appeared behind him, soundless; Jay didn’t notice, so he didn’t move. A shimmering cord wound around his neck, and strangled him to death.

I watched several more possible scenarios, involving an abrupt and vicious stabbing, an imbibing of poisoned beverages, and a burning alive (the latter including a particularly creative use of sound; Jay’s agonised screams echoed through my ears in three-part disharmony). I neither moved nor spoke, and I didn’t flinch again.

Eventually, the visions stopped.

‘The torment doesn’t seem to be working,’ I said to the empty air. ‘So you might as well skip it.’

I waited, but nothing and no one answered. Neither did the horror show start up again, though, so I considered it progress.

‘Perhaps you’d like to save everybody a lot of time and energy and just tell me what you’re upset about,’ I continued.

Nothing. My tormentors were either unable to communicate clearly, or they were having too much fun messing with my mind to bother doing so.

I heaved a sigh.

Focus, Ves. If the glaistigs don’t want to play nicely, ignore them.

My mind cleared a little as I formed the thought.

It really was terribly dark. Why hadn’t I done something about that already?

I summoned a tiny ball of light, bright as a miniature star, and stood blinking in the sudden white glare.

I’d made it halfway down a short passage. I had immediate cause to regret my light show, for the place was in a skin-crawling state of disrepair. The walls and ceiling were probably whitewashed, once, but a thick, black mould now covered every inch. Giddy gods, what hideous spores was I imbibing with every breath?

The floor was spongy underfoot, and a short way ahead of me the wooden boards had rotted through. A dark hole yawned, ready to swallow me whole if I’d taken another step or two, so the light had been a good move after all.

I averted my eyes from the mould, and pressed on, skirting carefully around the gap in the floor.

Where was I even trying to go? Good question. I’d been lured this way, but perhaps that had only been for the sake of the torturous cinematics.

Still, the situation had to be resolved, and if mass exorcism wasn’t an option, then I’d have to come up with something else.

That probably meant tracking down the ethereal inhabitants, righting their wrongs, ministering to their woes, and sending everyone away happy. Ideally.

Tricky when they won’t talk.

‘I’d really like to help,’ I tried, marching at a smart pace towards a closed door at the end of the passage.

The door swung open, hard. It hit the wall with a sharp crack, and shattered, falling in splintered chunks to the floor.

Hm.

‘I see that you’re angry,’ I observed, stepping over the mess. ‘And it was probably rude of us to visit without an invitation, for which I apologise. If you’d prefer for us to leave, we will.’ It cost me something to say this, for leaving without accomplishing our goals was a prospect to please nobody. Manners, though. Manners maketh man. And woman.

Nobody answered, except that the door ahead of me remained open, and the door behind me remained closed.

I took that for a polite rejection of my offer, and proceeded with some alacrity.

I was herded, by a series of unsubtle signs, around a corner, up a flight of stairs, along another passageway, up another flight of stairs, and finally into some kind of turret room right at the top of the house. Which was interesting, since I didn’t remember seeing any turrets or towers on the house as we’d approached.

‘Secret tower-top torture chamber,’ I enthused as I stepped inside. ‘Ladies, you have style.’

I was less impressed when I noticed a bone-chilling wind howling through the room, emanating from a leaded window that hung ominously open.

I peeked out. The ground was rather a long way below.

‘If anybody’s got any bright ideas about my leaving the building in some short, interesting fashion, think again,’ I said, stepping well back. The vision I’d seen of Jay, opening a door in the side of the house and plummeting to his death, sailed through my mind, and again I heard him scream.

Nothing happened. I wasn’t herded to the window by ghostly hands, nor shoved out upon a gust of wind, so I counted my blessings.

Instead, a door opened. Not the one I’d come through. I hadn’t even seen it, for it was thick with strange, silvery mould and indistinguishable from the walls.

Jay stood on the threshold.

‘Ves,’ he said, in some relief, and rushed forward.

I tried to stop him, but it was too late; the door slammed behind him, and a key turned in the lock.

‘As rescue efforts go, this one has suffered a setback,’ I observed.

Jay was too busy checking me for injury, apparently, for he had me in some kind of a death-grip and seemed unwilling to let go.

In fact, he seemed a little upset.

‘Oh,’ I said, as realisation dawned. ‘Let me guess. You’ve recently been treated to a montage of eighty-ways-to-kill-your-friendly-local-Ves.’

‘Not quite that many,’ he said into my shoulder, somewhat muffled. ‘Twenty though. Easily twenty.’

Come to think of it, I was feeling a little rattled myself. I realised this because I was in no more of a hurry to let go of Jay than he was to release me, so we stayed that way a while.

I emerged some minutes later, very thoroughly hugged, and a little eased at heart.

‘It was the screams that did it,’ I sighed. ‘Very realistic.’

Jay visibly shuddered. ‘Right,’ he said, squaring his shoulders. ‘Where have we ended up?’

‘A tower that shouldn’t exist, though at least I arrived in a sensible fashion, that being: I climbed some stairs. How did you get here?’

‘I went through a door from the dining room, which I’m pretty sure was on the ground floor. I certainly didn’t climb any stairs.’ He shuddered again. ‘Total Miss Havisham situation down there. I don’t recommend it.’

‘Table laden with a maggot-ridden feast, covered in cobwebs?’

‘I may need a complete decontamination when we get home.’

It was my turn to shudder. ‘I was expecting to find something helpful up here, but I seem to be out of luck.’ The turret room was empty, even of furniture, and nobody had manifested or tried to talk to me.

That being so, I wasn’t planning to stick around.

I went to the door through which Jay had emerged, and — cringing a bit, on account of the mould — I grabbed the ancient iron key, and turned it.

Slightly to my surprise, it turned easily, and I yanked the door open. We emerged onto a narrow, winding staircase, and ventured down.

I was braced for an eyeful of rotten food and dust-ridden furniture, but the chamber at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t the dining room.

‘I think we’ve found the ballroom,’ I said, stepping through a stone archway.

Jay followed me. Our footsteps rang loudly on the smooth tiled floor, echoing off the mould-silvered walls. I noticed the balcony that had, in my vision, tumbled down and squashed Jay beneath it. It looked capable of such a feat, for it sagged ominously, its encircling railings missing several spiralling wooden posts.

‘Don’t walk under that,’ I warned Jay.

He shook his head emphatically. We trailed into the centre of the dance floor, and stopped.

A door opened in the far wall.

‘Oh,’ said Zareen, and came through it. ‘You’re still alive.’

‘I haven’t fallen out of a window,’ I agreed. ‘Or been stabbed to death, or choked, or burned alive, or poisoned, or smashed to bits beneath a falling balcony.’

Zareen grimaced. ‘Or eaten by spiders.’

My eyes went very wide.

‘Have you seen Indira?’ Jay asked, either of me or Zareen, or perhaps both.

I shook my head. So did Zar.

‘But if we aren’t dead,’ said Zar, ‘then neither is she.’

‘So I figure,’ Jay agreed. ‘But I’d like to be sure.’

‘I haven’t seen Em either,’ I said, frowning. I was less worried about Ms Rogan than I was about Indira, though. There’s little that can daunt the likes of Emellana and less that could do her any harm.

‘Speak of the devil,’ answered Jay, and he sounded awed, which was odd — until I turned around.

Emellana, eschewing such mundane apparatus as doors, was entering the ballroom by way of the wall. In much the same way as might a patch of mould, or a puddle of water. She oozed.