won that last match against Falcon if Mr. Ma hadn’t cheated. It’s like they don’t want us to graduate.”
Jeremy considered this, then said, “A wee bit suspicious, I grant you. So let’s consider Miss Westin’s other alternative: get replacements for Mitch and our dearly departed Jezebel. If Mitch comes back-lovely-according to the rules, we then have an alternate attached to the team.”
Robert flopped onto the couch. “I don’t know. It makes sense. . but it feels like we’re giving up on them or something.”
Sarah sat next to him, close, so her knees touched his. “They are the ones who left us,” she said. “And it’s not like we have much of a choice.”
“But we do,” Eliot whispered.
Fiona turned and saw Eliot standing by the door to the Headmistress’s office in the only shadow in the room. He gripped Lady Dawn tight in his hands, and his eyes were hard and cold. “There’s a third option Miss Westin didn’t mention.”
“Oh, come now, Post,” Jeremy said with a little laugh. “What other option could there be?”
“Jezebel,” Eliot said. “She’s not here because she’s trapped in Hell fighting a war. So. .” He straightened and looked them all in the eye. “We go and rescue her.”
Audrey shut and locked the door to her new office. Her space occupied the topmost floor of the house’s Victorian turret.
It was a tiny space, clean, and lit by skylights.
Behind the plaster of walls and ceiling and under the oak floors were sheets of lead burned with mathematics and arcane symbols to keep outsiders out. . and her thoughts in.
Her favorite books sat on the encircling shelves: The works of Aristotle and Thoreau, Norse proto-runesongs, and the secret whisper hymns of the Saints of Glossimere. These comforted her.
There was a chair with ample padding and a desk. What more did one require?
Privacy.
She strained to hear Cecilia prattling about the house. Not a sound. The old hag slept more each day, saving her strength, she claimed.
Audrey held her breath.
All this waiting drove her mad. Once she thought her patience limitless-before the twins had come.
She ran a hand over the desk and settled into her chair.
But was not waiting an action, as well? No. Waiting was waiting. All the philosophizing in the world did not change that.
Her desktop was a slab of partially marbleized limestone, streaked with color and crystal, and tiny snail and trilobite fossils. She traced their curls. So old. And like her, frozen.
She had to start, a tiny step forward, her journey toward action. . by seeing what she could.
From a drawer, she with took out a corkboard, a box of plastic pushpins, and a ball of yarn. She picked pins at random and-without looking-stabbed them into the board. Her other hand wound the yarn about the pins.
She stared at the leaded crystal skylights; refracted rainbows streamed through the air and onto the blank walls. Audrey didn’t think. . she drifted. . let her subconscious surface.
Her hands continued to move, sticking the pins, wrapping the yarn.
Some pinpoints turned in the box, and stabbed her. She let them taste her blood. This was part of the ritual as well.
At last, she exhaled and stopped.
Her pins had been arranged on the cork, and tracing a web of connections among them was the yarn, dotted with her blood.
In the center were two pins-one red, one blue-together (although they leaned away from one another). This represented Eliot and Fiona.
Surrounding them were random constellations of the other pushpins. The yarn twined about them, this way and that. Audrey discerned three linked groups: The League, the Infernals, and scattered hither and yon, the so- called neutrals of Paxington.
Two pins were near the twins: one green (this had to be Dallas) and one silver, leaning at a rakish angle (which was Henry).
One frayed line, however, connected Henry to a Paxington neutral. Curious.
She’d suspected, even
For now, she would keep this a secret. . until it could be wisely spent.
Her hand drifted to the pin box. Only two were left: one black and one white. The white was bone white, death white-that was her. The black had to be Louis.
Where did he fit?
And more interesting, why hadn’t she placed either of them among the others?
She focused all her attention back on the board, and only now saw there were dozens of pins along the very edges-as if repelled from the center. . far away from the main players and events.
She touched them. Felt nothing.
They were not League members, nor were they Infernals, and all the Paxington neutrals were accounted for.
That left whom. . the mortal magical families? She scoffed. All too feeble to be involved in any significant way.
This mystery drifted through her mind like mist, filling it with silence and dread. After all these years, who else was out there?
She jumped. Blinked.
There was no reason to start. . but her gaze riveted upon the black 1970s-era phone on her desk. It had not rung, but it
She waited for it to actually ring.
It seemed like it wanted to sound, as if there was someone trying to contact her, and yet so far off, it had not the strength to quite make the connection.
Audrey tentatively picked up the receiver and listened.
There was a hiss and a crackle, and a voice broke though the white noise.
It was Louis. He was singing off-key: “
“Louis?”
He stopped singing.
“Audrey!” he cried. “Beloved, it is your Louis!” His enthusiasm deflated. “How long have you been listening? No, never mind. There is little time. I’m using Eliot’s phone and a child’s trick with a Klein sphere to make this connection.”[60]
Audrey’s first impulse was to hang up on Louis, the greatest of all liars. But he was also the Louis she loved.
She held those thoughts balanced in her mind. Tip one way and she would hang up and forever sever their connection on more than one level.
Or listen, and tip the other way: embrace this madness she felt for him still.
Cutting the tie would be easiest. She had done that before with Eliot and Fiona, leaving her maternal duty but severing the irrational love.
But what was
“Please,” Louis whispered. There was desperation in his voice.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“This is not about us-well it is in a way, and I know I have made an ultimate mess of things between us, all my fault. . again, not the point. What I’m trying to say is it’s about the children.”
