“Miss Ravenswood,” snapped Alitz.
“What am I seeing?”
“If you were trying but at all, you would be seeing very little,” said Alitz.
“I mean, are you making these thoughts up, or are they memories? You know him, don’t you? My brother?”
“Oh yes,” said Alitz, lifting her cup to her lips. “I’ve known Gedeon his entire life.”
Ilsa was hit with another image: a boy of seven or eight, fair-haired and red-cheeked, running across the park with the string of a kite in his fists. Another boy with black hair and blue eyes – Eliot again, as an untroubled child – was tossing the kite in the air, trying to get it to catch the breeze.
“You’ve seen all these things!” gasped Ilsa.
“And you are failing at your task, Miss Ravenswood,” said Alitz, putting her cup back on its saucer with a clatter. She was losing patience. “I f I wanted to distract you from the present moment, of course I would show you things you wished to see – and then perhaps I would slit your throat while you were daydreaming. Do not underestimate my magic, Miss Ravenswood. A Whisperer can incapacitate you with nothing but your own mind the same way a Wraith would with blunt force, and they would leave less evidence.”
“Right,” said Ilsa. “It’s just—”
“It’s just that you’re yearning,” said Alitz, like the idea bored her thoroughly. “Want is a weakness, Miss Ravenswood; a weakness any half-skilled Whisperer would be able to exploit. Show someone what you desire and they can use it to control you.”
“It ain’t a weakness.”
“Speak up.”
“I said it ain’t a weakness,” repeated Ilsa, hearing her own uncertainty. Perhaps Alitz was right, but her whole life had been about want, and she was loath to think of it in Alitz’s terms. Want was Ilsa’s driving force.
Had it been Gedeon’s too?
Ilsa disguised her thoughts by bringing her cup to her lips again, but missed, sloshing tea onto her white lace summer dress.
“Oops,” she said, but it came out in a slur.
“Miss Ravenswood?” said Alitz, quirking a disapproving brow at Ilsa’s ruined dress. “Are you well?”
Ilsa didn’t know. She held her teacup with both hands to stop it slipping from her lax grip. She felt drowsy. No, not drowsy. Her mind was sharp, it was just her body that was losing strength. She tried to tell Alitz this but her lips wouldn’t cooperate. They had gone completely numb. It was happening to her fingers as well.
Alitz nodded, but she didn’t understand. She wasn’t reading Ilsa’s thoughts. “The heat does get to one this time of year,” she said, though her tone was as unsympathetic as ever. “I find an afternoon nap the best remedy.”
Alitz raised her teacup to take another sip, and Ilsa summoned every drop of her failing strength to launch herself from her chair and swing one dead hand at the cup, which went flying and shattered on the floor. Ilsa landed in a heap on the rug.
The tea. Someone had poisoned the tea.
Indignation replaced Alitz’s usual coolness, but only for a second. She was no fool. She turned her scrutiny on Ilsa, and her unfocused gaze finally sharpened.
“Earth and stars,” she hissed when she saw what Ilsa had understood. She pushed herself to her feet – only to collapse back into the chair. When she tried to speak again, only a jumble of sounds escaped.
Alitz was old. She would be taken by the poison quicker. Ilsa needed to be the one to summon help.
The crash of china hadn’t brought anyone running. Ilsa drew breath to scream but the sound died in her weakened throat. The numbness was spreading up her arms. She could still feel her legs, though they trembled like blades of grass whipped by the breeze when she forced herself upright. Could she make it to the hall, where someone might see her? Might wasn’t good enough, and one step sent her crashing to her knees. She tried a bigger form – her trusty leopard who might withstand poison longer than small, human Ilsa – but she couldn’t hold the shape.
Ilsa half-crawled, half-dragged herself to the console, rage and determination propelling her forward. She hadn’t survived Miss Mitcham, winters on the streets, Oracle assassins and Sorcerer rebels to die drinking tea. To never even see the face of the cowardly bastard who had ended her.
Alitz tried to speak again; she said something that sounded like what, but Ilsa knew what she was doing; she knew what was on top of the console. She used one of its legs to haul herself into a standing position and balance. There was the vase; the beautiful, probably hugely expensive vase Pyval had tried to compel her to pick up on the Whisperers’ first visit. And above the console was a mirror.
With one useless hand, Ilsa knocked the vase towards her and scooped it into her arms like a baby. She needed a little distance. She only needed to hold herself up for a moment. Even her lungs were struggling now, and Alitz’s unmistakably frightened visage swam and doubled in the mirror as she raised the vase carefully. She couldn’t drop it; she couldn’t botch the throw. She had one chance to summon help or they would both die here.
Ilsa put all her weight into her shoulder and threw the vase at the mirror with a pitiful cry. She pitched forward and hit the floor. She didn’t see what she’d accomplished – but she heard it. An immense, ringing crash hailed a shower of glass and pottery all around her.
All the fight went out of her, replaced by relief, when shouts went up across the house and garden. Feet pounded the floors. The door burst open with a crack of wood and the French windows to the garden shattered as wolves and bears and big cats piled into the room, ready to protect the Zoo
