by Jay stared at the staircase in consternation.
‘Thanks,’ he said faintly.
I made a flourishing gesture of invitation, indicating the proffered stairs with a sweep of my free arm. ‘After you.’
‘Uh. Why don’t you go first?’
‘Don’t worry, the House won’t hurt you.’
Jay gave me the are-you-crazy stare. ‘I’ve narrowly missed having my car crushed by a ball of earth the size of four of my heads, almost been flattened by a flying set of stairs, and all of this has happened in the last ten minutes of my life.’
‘All right. I’ll go first.’ I picked up my discarded creature carrier and set off up the steps. After a few moments’ hesitation, I heard Jay’s footsteps ringing behind me.
There was no door at the top, but there was a long window set with many small panes of glass. When I reached the top, about fifty of those panes flickered and vanished, creating an entryway just large enough to admit Jay and myself.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How convenient.’ For beyond the makeshift doorway I could see one of the larger, oak-panelled drawing-rooms of the first floor, or what had been a drawing-room once. It was now used as a kind of common room, and one of its occupants was Miranda Evans, our vet and specialist in magickal beasts of all kinds.
‘Hi,’ I said as I wandered through the window, and set the creature carrier down at her feet.
She was lounging in the kind of shabby, velvet-clad wing-back chair in which Home abounds, her red robes partially open to reveal a chunky hand-knitted jumper worn underneath. Her blonde hair was half out of its bindings, as usual; she took one look at me and Jay and the present we’d brought for her, and immediately scraped it back into a more business-like ponytail. ‘More work,’ she said with her quirk of a smile. ‘Lovely.’
‘Alikats, breeding pair. Extracted from South Moors.’
Her brows went up at that, and she hastily swallowed the dregs of her cup of tea. ‘Injuries?’
‘None visible. I think they’re unharmed, they just need a check-up and then resettling.’
By the time I had finished this sentence, Miranda was already on her knees, peeking through the bars at my slumbering alikat. ‘Gorgeous,’ she commented.
I’d lost her attention altogether, but that was all right. Jay and I watched as she gathered up our beleaguered pair; with a nod to us both, she left the common room at a smartish pace.
Jay glanced behind himself. The door we’d used had sealed itself up again, turning back into a window. ‘Is it a coincidence that we found Miranda right here?’
‘No,’ I said, making a beeline for the kettle and the tea cupboard. ‘That was the House helping us out. It does that.’
‘When it isn’t trying to kill us.’
‘It wasn’t trying to kill us.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘It was trying to kill you. I was fine.’
This was a joke, of course, but I regretted it when Jay developed an expression of mingled anxiety and affront. I put a cup of tea into his hands to pacify him, or at least to distract him, neither of which worked. ‘Haven’t you seen the House do that before?’
‘Nope.’
‘It’s because you’re new,’ I decided. ‘It hasn’t figured you out yet. It will soon.’
‘Then it will stop trying to kill me?’ Jay looked profoundly sceptical.
‘No. Then you’ll stop being careless enough to get in the way of House’s helpful gestures. Or Zareen’s pranks, for that matter.’
Jay took a long gulp of tea, like a man chugging something strong and alcoholic. ‘Survive a few more weeks for optimum results. Got it.’
I chugged mine, too, for we did not have time to linger. Somewhat to my regret, for the first-floor common room is one of my favourite places at Home. It’s something to do with the quality of the light, I think; those long windows somehow admit the perfect degree of it, in the perfect quantity, keeping the room bathed in a peaceful glow that perfectly brings out the mellow tones of the wooden walls and flooring. Those chairs are remarkable, too. We might not have had time, but I sank into one of them anyway, the crimson one. Its proportions immediately adjusted around me, creating of itself a seat of perfect size and dimensions to accommodate my frame. The cushions softened, too, since I prefer a pillowy structure, and the back shortened a little to suit my height — its previous occupant was apparently rather taller than me, which isn’t unusual.
‘Lovely,’ I said, wearing my smile of serene contentment.
‘Out you get,’ said Jay unsympathetically. ‘We’ve a report to make.’
I sighed, deeply, but he was right. Something was very much amiss at South Moors, and the Powers needed to know about it right away. ‘Fine, fine,’ I said with decided ill grace. I threw a cushion at him as I rose; unlike the loose earth from Zareen’s inverted trees, this he dodged with easy grace, and raised a single brow at me.
‘Have you no mischievous side?’ I asked him in exasperation.
‘None whatsoever.’ He said it with such a straight face, I had to believe him.
‘You and Zareen should get on like—’
‘Cats and dogs,’ he interrupted. ‘We do.’
I tossed the tangles from my hair, adjusted my poor ruined dress, and made for the door. ‘They should have given you someone much more serious to work with.’
‘But you’re the one who needed me.’ Jay somehow beat me to the door, opened it, and held it for me with an ironical little bow.
Considering the most prominent of the reasons why I needed him, that reflection was mildly embarrassing, so I responded only with a haughty look of disdain and strode forth.
Jay was kind enough to fall in behind me without further comment, and I was able to pretend that I didn’t hear the low chuckle that was almost masked by the sound of the door closing behind us.
The process for seeking an audience with Milady is rather particular.
First, one is expected to present oneself in her preferred location, that being at the very top of the very tallest tower of the House. And why not? There is something agreeably fairy tale about it, even if the physical exertion required is not always well received by her supplicants.
Jay managed the ascent of three narrow, winding stone staircases in increasingly strained silence. They are the kind with uneven steps (charmingly worn by time, and the passage of a million footsteps); spiralling construction (tightly wound, so as to make of them the greatest possible obstacle); and occasional landings, randomly dispersed (the kind with dark, shadowy corners, wherein one half expects to find all manner of disagreeable creatures residing). And of course, none of them has fewer than thirty or so steps. All things considered, I was impressed that he made it halfway up the fourth staircase before the complaints began.
‘Isn’t there a lift?’ He sounded faintly breathless but not excessively so, which wasn’t bad. Jay obviously kept himself decently fit.
‘Of course not,’ I said, in the ringing tones of a supremely fit woman (a boast, but what can I say? I’ve been climbing these staircases every day for more than a decade. That alone will give a woman lungs of steel, and the hind quarters of a racehorse).
‘What do you mean, of course not? Lifts are wonderful.’
I cast him a withering look over my shoulder. ‘This is a seventeenth-century mansion. Where do you suggest we put an elevator? Which priceless and irreplaceable features shall we rip out in order to make room for it?’
‘Fair point. What about the house itself, then? If it can present you with a staircase straight up to the common room, it can whisk us up to the top tower in a jiffy.’
‘Are you in a wheelchair, Jay?’
‘Uh… no.’
‘Valerie Greene — have you met her yet? Library? — is wheelchair-bound. Dear House takes the very best care of her. Any door she approaches opens upon just the place she wants to go.’
‘That’s good of it.’
‘Isn’t it? And quite ingenious.’
‘So we’re left to haul ourselves up all these stairs because…?’
‘Because we are able-bodied, fit young people, Jay, and I don’t think House approves of laziness.’
I fancy it was the word laziness that silenced him, or perhaps he simply ran out of breath. Either way, he had not another word to advance until we arrived at the top of the sixth set of stairs and stood, briefly winded (or he was, at any rate; I deny all such charges), and taking great gulps of air. We were in a cramped, rounded tower; before us was one of those narrow, arrow-slit type windows filled in with glass, through which we were afforded a fine view of the green, sun-dappled hills beyond the gates.
‘Lovely,’ I commented.
Jay said nothing, so I turned to the one other feature of that stark little tower: a heavy oak door, closed and barred.
I knocked.
‘What now?’ whispered Jay, when nothing happened.
‘House is consulting with Milady as to whether she wants to admit us.’
‘Does she ever decline?’
‘Me, no. You, however… who knows.’
Jay allowed that to pass in silence. ‘Does she really live up here?’ he said after a while — just as the door unbarred itself with a clang and swung slowly inwards.
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Jay made no move, so I entered the room first.
Milady’s room is only about six metres across, its walls curved most of the way around. Those walls were fitted with panelling at some point in history, though not with the smooth, warm-hued oak that’s prevalent across most of the House. The tower’s walls are sheathed in iridescent crystal. There’s one window, but it doesn’t look over the countryside like the one in the antechamber. Through it one can see only swirling white mist.
I stepped into the centre of the room, and positioned myself in the middle of the thick, royal-blue rug that covers the floor.
‘Afternoon, Milady,’ I said cordially, and curtseyed.
‘Uh.’ Jay came up next to me and turned a full circle on the spot, neck craning, as though Milady might be hidden somewhere in a room with no furniture and no corners. ‘Where is she?’ he whispered to me.
I elbowed him. ‘Say hello,’ I hissed.
‘Hello, Milady.’
That was it. I elbowed him again, a bit harder this time, and by way of judicious application of pressure to his upper back I contrived to force him into a semblance of a polite bow.
The air sparkled. ‘Cordelia Vesper,’ said a low, cultured female voice. ‘Jay Patel. What have you to tell me today?’
