Googling Maud would have turned up photos and mentions of me, mostly from fundraisers and galas, and those would name me as the Woolworth heir. But there was also Mom’s obituary to consider, and my very public adoption. Connecting the dots wouldn’t have been hard. Especially since a practitioner in Eloise’s position would have access to the Society databases.
“Woolly, what do you think?” Armed with amped-up wards, she ought to be able to scan Eloise down to the marrow for a reading on her intent. “Is it safe to let her in?”
“Woolly?” Eloise glanced at Amelie. “Who is Woolly?”
Neither of us enlightened her.
The porch light beside Eloise hummed thoughtfully before flaring her consent.
“Come in.” I made it an order. I wanted to get to the bottom of her interest in me. “Leave any weapons you’re carrying at the door. She won’t let you bring them in.”
“Weapons?” Her wide eyes rounded. “I’m unarmed.” Her hand lifted to her throat. “This is a social call.”
Amelie choked on a snort, and I elbowed her in the gut. Once upon a time, we had been that naïve too. I wouldn’t be the one to tear off Eloise’s blinders. Truth be told, I relished the idea of at least one person thriving in our world who might never think to check for monsters under her bed.
“In or out.” I rolled my hand in a hurry-up motion. “Class starts in fifteen minutes, and my teacher gets his suspenders twisted if I’m late.”
Okay, so Linus had yet to wear suspenders, but I strongly suspected he owned a pair. How could he not? And if he didn’t? I knew what I was getting him for his birthday.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” Eloise murmured as she stepped over the threshold. Or made the attempt. Woolly suspended her midstride, and the wards slid over her skin, assessing every inch of her. Thirty seconds later, Woolly released her, and Eloise stumbled into the foyer beside us, flailing like a salmon swimming upstream. “What was that?”
“Magic.” I took her by the elbow, guided her into the living room, and shoved her toward a couch. “Sit.”
She perched on the edge of the cushion, her spine ruler-straight, her legs crossed at the ankles.
Still half-naked and rather feral, Amelie stood behind Eloise, clutching the spoon in her fist.
“Okay, Eloise, let’s try this again.” I hooked my hands on my hips. “You found out I’m alive and decided to visit. Why?”
There must be more to this visit than smearing salve over her mother’s decades-old hurt.
“As I said, I hoped we could talk.” Her manicured fingers twisted into knots on her lap. “That maybe one day we might be friends.”
“Your family disowned her,” Amelie snarled, jabbing the spoon at the back of Eloise’s head like a deranged zombie fantasizing about using her skull as a bowl. “What right do you have to—?”
“Amelie,” I warned, flexing my palm until she surrendered her weapon. “Let her talk.”
“I understand your suspicion,” Eloise began. “I read articles about your time in…”
“Atramentous,” I finished for her.
Eloise swayed a bit, her hand again rising to her throat to clutch pearls she wasn’t wearing.
“I was locked away for five years for the murder of Maud Woolworth.” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m sure you can imagine how imprisonment changed me.”
The version of me who might have hugged her back and welcomed her into my home with happy tears had died locked in a cell buried so deep underground the tang of mold still coated the back of my throat on occasion.
“View this from my perspective.” I swept my gaze up and down her, doubting her kittens-and-rainbows outlook would allow for such a thing. “Some long-lost relative popping up on my doorstep after my reinstatement as the Woolworth heir makes your timing suspect.”
News of how the Grande Dame had pardoned her niece was circulating too. Eloise might be telling the truth. Maybe this was an innocent visit. Or she might be a ladder-climber who had spotted an opportunity to align herself with the Woolworth name under the guise of mending fences.
“This was a mistake.” Eloise shot to her feet and backed toward the foyer. “I shouldn’t have come.” She wiped her palms on her pressed slacks. “I wish things could have been different between us, Grier, I do, but this is too much.”
Woolly opened the door in an invitation to leave that Eloise was quick to accept.
I massaged the base of my neck after the locks snicked into place behind her. “That went well.”
“She shows up out of the blue all these years later?” Amelie pulled aside the curtain on the nearest window, and we watched Eloise get in her hired car and leave. “I don’t buy it.”
“Odette did call Dame Marchand. That part is true. She was hoping to get a lead on my father.”
“How do we know it wasn’t Dame Marchand who sent her protégé to woo you back into the fold? High Society families are always shopping for an angle.” The fabric crumpled in her fist. “Besides, you’ve already got one spy living on the property. You don’t need a matched set.”
“Better the devil you know.” Defending Linus just put her teeth on edge. There was no point trying when her mind was made up about him. “What are your plans for the night?”
“I’ll be diving into your finances here in a little bit.” Her yawn illustrated how much the prospect excited her. “I’m almost to the good stuff,” she assured me, retrieving her cell from parts unknown to check for messages. From Boaz. He was the only person calling her these days, and he checked in every forty-eight hours like clockwork. Yet he hadn’t so much as texted me since leaving her in my care. “Before I get bogged down by all those decimal points, I’m putting dinner in the Crock-Pot.”
Hope that this might signal a return to normal for her tightened my chest. “You’re tired of cereal?”
“No, but cereal is tired of me.” An unhappy gurgle welled in her stomach. “You off to meet Linus?”
“Yes.” Cue my belly’s anticipatory growl. “Lessons wait for no woman. Or parakeet.”
“I’ll be here when you get back,” she joked, mostly, the words less bitter than in nights past.
When Amelie veered toward one of the downstairs bathrooms, she tapped each doorknob in the hall as she passed them, a new habit she’d developed that reminded me of a prisoner counting the bars on her cell. Tension ratcheted through my shoulders when her fingers brushed the glass knob leading down into the basement, but her stride didn’t so much as hitch as she marched on.
Thank Hecate it was still magically sealed, and no one had figured out how to access it.
At least, not yet.
Two
With Eileen, my eyeball-studded grimoire, tucked under one arm and what I considered Keet’s traveling cage dangling from my fingers, I exited Woolly through the kitchen and entered the rear garden. Following the winding flagstone path to the carriage house, I put an extra bounce in my step that probably had more to do with the smell of cinnamon and butter wafting through the window over the sink than the lessons awaiting me.
The front door no longer stood open, and I missed that implied welcome more than I ever expected.
All thanks to Julius, who had arrived from the Lawson aviary last week to assist Linus in the next phase of my education: the familiar bond. Now that the great horned butthole was in residence, Linus’s open-door policy had been nixed. Almost like he worried his owl might accidentally fly far, far away and never be seen or heard from again after I accidentally left the door open and accidentally chased him out with a broom.
Once certain I wasn’t about to get dive-bombed, I darted inside and slammed the door behind me. I didn’t have to search far to spot Linus bent over the stove while he flipped French toast for our breakfast. Well, my breakfast. The man ate like more of a bird than his fowl-tempered familiar. Ha.
Tonight, he wore dove-gray slacks that molded to his backside. Having pants tailor-made did that. His white button-down shirt was likewise fitted to highlight his lean musculature, the cuffs rolled up over his forearms. His dark auburn hair brushed his shoulders, the ends curling slightly thanks to the humidity. “How is Amelie today?”
Each dusk, he greeted me with the same question. I might have drawn the containment ward meant to keep the dybbuk from repossessing her, but he had been the one to tattoo it on her ankle. His interest in her was the same as his interest in me—clinical. “Any new symptoms?”
“No, Dr. Lawson.” A grin tugged at my lips. “The patient has not relapsed since dawn.”
Linus glanced at me over his shoulder, his dark eyes dancing, bluer than black at the moment. “I don’t have a medical doctorate.” A smile blossomed. “Yet.”
“Why does it not surprise me to learn you’re chasing another suffix?” I slumped into my usual chair at the kitchen table, settled Eileen an arm’s length away, then placed Keet’s cage at my feet. “You’re too ambitious for your own good. You make the rest of us look bad.”
“You have plenty of time to catch up.” He plated us each four toasty slices of heaven, cut them on the diagonal, and dusted them with confectioner’s sugar. He carried them to the table before returning for the maple syrup and butter, and I noticed he only brought one fork. Not that I had expected him to indulge. I had yet to see him do more than nibble. As far as I could tell, he just liked keeping up appearances. “You’re twenty-one.” Back at the counter, he poured us each a glass of milk then claimed the seat across from me. “You’ve got centuries to accomplish anything you set your mind to, Grier.”
“You’re not eating,” I mumbled around a mouthful of bliss. “Why bother cooking if you aren’t hungry?”
“You’re hungry.” He cracked open the binder containing the syllabus for his beginner’s guide to necromancy and flipped to where we left off last night. “That’s reason enough.”