“I can see that. Eric does seem to be the sort who won’t use three words when one will do. So, what had you so enthralled?” she asked. If this was a book about magic, it would probably give her the opening she needed to start asking questions of her own.
“I don’t know if enthralled is the word I would use,” he said, making a sour face. Unlike Eric, who seemed to have two expressions, arrogant and sullen, Sebastian practically radiated everything he was feeling. “It’s not very pleasant reading. It’s about accidental Transformations, times when something went wrong and a person or object got transformed that wasn’t supposed to be. I thought I would see if there were any were-creatures that had ever been created that way, and if there were, if they were infectious afterward. It’s just not fair for you to be locked up here for three months if there’s no need, but before I can say ‘there’s no need’ I have to have evidence. So since no one knows how I got this way, it seems reasonable that the same rules would apply.”
“It’s a set of very detailed accounts. And since these are accidents, the results are, as my father would have said, ‘Not appropriate for dinnertime discussion, young man.’” He smiled at her over his spectacles, inviting her to share the joke. “That used to strike me as grossly unfair since he and his men saw nothing wrong with discussing tournament wounds, bloody battlefields and detailed ways they’d dispatched whatever it was they had been hunting that day over their food.”
She laughed at that. Then felt both surprised and gratified that she could still laugh.
But after talking with the Godmother, after seeing her father, she felt a great deal better. Not that she wanted to stay here, but she did feel better, less frantic — and here was Sebastian looking up yet another reason to think that she wasn’t going to change because of his bite. “I can sympathize with your feelings, but I would prefer not to hear the details of that book,” she told him. “I am enjoying this fine cooking, and I would prefer not to have it spoiled.”
“It’s good to hear you laugh. I take it that the mirror worked for you?” He closed the book and set it aside, changing the subject.
“It did. It did, quite surpassing my expectations.” She paused. “I confess that now that I have had something that magical in my own hands, I see the attraction of magic,” she replied slowly. “I never really did before. Partly it just didn’t seem real in the way that something I could measure and shape was real. Partly because magic things always happen in stories to other extraordinary people, and I am, as my stepmother says, so ordinary I positively repel magic. And partly, well, it just doesn’t seem…the sort of thing that a rational person would want to be involved with. It always seemed to me that either magic was too large and uncertain to be controlled, or that you could get the same results with less effort and means that were not magical.”
“It is uncertain, but The Trad — Ah, it’s more predictable than you might think,” he responded, flushing as he corrected whatever it was he had almost let slip. Since she couldn’t begin to imagine what “The Trad” both he and Elena had mentioned might be, she simply set it down as some sort of magician’s secret. “It does take an awful lot of effort, though. You are correct about that. And more often than not, it is more efficient to do things without it. I’ve been studying magic since the Godmother identified me as having the sorcerous talents and I still find it a lot easier to just go fetch what I need from the storerooms and light candles with a wax-dip. Since I was about four when I started, I’ve had a lot of experience in figuring out when not to do things.”
“‘What is wisdom, then, but knowing when it is best not to speak, and when it is best to hold one’s hand,’” she quoted, and winked at him. “So wise for one so young!”
He turned serious and she saw the weight of responsibility he suffered under. “I wish I were wiser. I could probably come up with answers faster. Most of what I do, when it’s not repeating spells that I know work, is trial and error. Mostly I make things for other people; I’m quite good at protective amulets, for instance, and the Godmother relies on me for them. Since I don’t go out and ride the boundaries of my property, I have my servants place more of those amulets at key places to keep my people safe from supernatural and magical hazards. I have Eric to ensure that they are safe from ordinary perils. I’ve been working on my own problem ever since it happened, when I’m not making sure my people are safe from me, and from things outside. At least I am fairly certain I didn’t transform myself. The things I was doing before I changed were all tried-and-true spells and I definitely took all the right precautions.”
“Do you think your servants might be humans that had been transformed?” she asked. “The invisible ones, that is. Transformed from humans into whatever it is that they are.”
“Oh, a magician could do that, but why would he?” Sebastian returned a logical question for hers. “You’ve seen for yourself that having invisible servants is deuced inconvenient. I frankly cannot think of any creature so hideous that making it invisible would make up for not knowing where it was, and I can’t think of any other magicians, even the nasty ones, who wouldn’t feel the same. Especially the nasty ones. The nasty ones are always having to look over their shoulders for enemies. Can you imagine how having invisible things lurking about would make them feel? Besides, I already know what they are. They’re Spirit Elementals.”
“Pardon?” She had heard of Elementals before this, but…not that sort. “Spirit Elementals? Aren’t all Elementals spirits?”
“There aren’t four Elements,” he explained. “There are five. Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit. Only magicians ever bother about the Spirit Element — look, if you are finished with dinner, come up to my workroom. It’s easier if I show you.”
She considered this for a moment. It wasn’t as if she had anything important to do — she could go stare at the mirror for a while, and then go cry herself to sleep, or she could take him up on the invitation and learn something about the invisibles. Or more accurately, learn what he thought they were.
“All right, I would like that,” she responded. He beamed at her. It was rather charming, actually, to see him so enthusiastic.
They left the yellow-scarved servant to clear away, and Bella followed him down — or rather, up, an entirely new path in the maze that was Redbuck Manor.
In the rare moments when she had pictured a magician’s lair, it had been a place dark, mysterious, wreathed in smokes of various odors — most of them probably nasty — and definitely underground. So going up quite a long staircase was certainly a bit of a surprise.
Instead of a dungeon, he brought her to what must have been a room in the highest part of the Manor. It had windows on all four sides, all of them glassed. The sun was down, but there was just enough light left in the sky for her to go to the windows and see that the Manor was built in the form of a square with a cross in it, so that
