“And have them accidentally unmake Cheetham and half the magicians of Britain in the process?” said Jack. “I think not.”
Violet ventured, “Could Walter have been telling the truth, at my hearing? They haven’t actually figured out how use the contract yet?”
“If that was the case,” said Adelaide, “the clever thing to do would be to get their hands on someone even cleverer.”
The room looked at Edwin. Edwin looked at the runes on his wrist and pressed his mouth into a line.
“No,” said Robin, nearly a snarl. “That’s it. We’ll go to Sutton Cottage. You’ll be safe there.”
“What was that about nowhere I usually go?” said Edwin. “That’s the first place they’d expect.”
“It has warding against magicians!”
Edwin paused. “It’d only be moving the siege to a stronger fortress. But it would buy us time to work out what to do and see if I can get these runes off.”
“What are you planning to do now, stop your own heart?” Robin snapped.
“Robin,” said Adelaide, a clear note of warning.
Several people began to speak at once. Jack raised his voice to cut across them.
“Come to Cheetham Hall.”
He succeeded. The first notes of argument fell away, and everyone looked at him.
“It’s my parents’ land,” added Jack. “They have control over guest-right, and we can tell them—well, as much or as little as we decide.”
“Go to the very spot where this party is taking place?” Robin demanded.
“Yes,” said Jack. “We stop letting ourselves be besieged. We arrive at the field early and set up an ambush.”
“I like it,” said Maud, to Jack’s utter lack of surprise. “Either something happens at the gala or it doesn’t. Either way, it gives us time to come up with a plan, on friendly ground, and for Addy to talk to this Grimm in the meantime.”
“Edwin,” said Jack, moving over to the couch, “show me that summons.”
Edwin met Jack’s eyes as he extended his wrist and gave a tired creak of a laugh.
“What?”
“I’m remembering the last time we tried to involve you in removing a rune-curse on someone’s arm.”
Not one of Jack’s finest mornings, all told.
“Don’t tempt me to un-involve myself,” he said, pushing down Edwin’s cuff. “I remember how peaceful my life was before it was invaded by Blyths and hangers-on.”
Now it was Maud’s turn to laugh. She gave Jack an affectionate look from her position on the floor. Intolerable. Jack was never going to rid himself of any of these people.
“And I don’t think this is a true curse,” he added to Edwin. “My mother should be able to negate it, if we get you to her quickly.”
That settled things. They were moving this circus of disasters to Cheetham Hall.
* * *
Violet and Maud were in their element when given the chance to arrange some theatre. They disappeared somewhere in Spinet House, arguing about the most convincing way to make it look like they were all staying safe inside during the weeks before the equinox gala. Apparently Violet would create some illusions of twitched curtains and nighttime silhouettes, and anchor them to the window frames. She and Edwin then planned to go—carefully disguised—to Maud and Robin’s townhouse and set up some similar tricks, after which all four of them would head to Cheetham.
Robin and Alan and Adelaide were poring over railway timetables, calculating when Adelaide might make it to Gloucester and what routes she might take south afterwards; and several other routes that various people could take, leaving London at different times, that would obscure the fact that they were all converging on the same point.
And Jack was alone with Edwin Courcey for the first time in nearly five years.
They were in the master bedchamber on the second floor, with its impressive windows looking out onto the Bayswater street. Violet and Maud slept in here. Jack was trying not to look at anything too closely, after making the mistake of recognising one of the little jars on the dresser. It was bad enough having Violet regale him gleefully with tales of her bedroom escapades. He didn’t need to know that she was also familiar with Whistlethropp’s under-the-counter range of imbued products.
Jack expected to be plunged right into the technical detail of magical wards, but instead Edwin gave him an uncharacteristically direct look. Prolonged eye contact often gave Edwin the air of a man straining to hold a weight steady.
“I want your honest opinion, Jack. Do we keep Ross involved? Robin and Maud are most of the way to forgiving him already, and … Violet’s house likes him.”
Unspoken: You and I aren’t kindhearted people. We should see things clearly.
Jack didn’t know if he could. He was full of his own complex potion of anger and forgiveness. He thought of how Alan had looked when he realised Jack understood his reasons: flayed open by exhausted relief, shadowed with that gorgeous lingering defiance.
Physical attraction to someone—that, Jack could handle, even at the extremes that Alan brought out in him. But he seemed to want impossible things that belonged nowhere near the bedroom, or even reality. He wanted to crack open his rib cage and place Alan Ross inside it, the better to warm him with Jack’s own blood.
Not that he planned to admit that. Certainly not to Edwin, of all people.
“It seems I stand dicentis for the man in his absence,” Jack said, keeping his tone light. “I say we keep him. He’s sharp and resourceful and motivated, not to mention how useful the perturbation might be. And if you’re asking if I trust him not to turn coat if his family is threatened again—well, how does that make him any less worthy than the rest of us? How would you behave if it were Robin?”
Edwin didn’t reply. But his lips moved, and finally he nodded: verdict reached, matter closed. He pulled out a notebook and gestured to the window.
“Now, Violet’s the best person to do the house wards, but I think I can add a misdirection,” he said. “Not quite the same targeted warding that Sutton and the Barrel—had,” with a wince. “That’s recognisable, if you’ve felt it before. I want something subtler for the front of the house. Discouragement. And we haven’t time for me to grow it into geraniums in the window boxes, but I’m sure I’ve read about anchoring runes that will release magic into a spell like that over a long period.”
Edwin looked expectantly at Jack. He’d refused to sleep until this was done, claiming that it’d be easier if he simply wrote the runes down before Jack left, and then applied them later when he’d rested and had most of his magic back. So he still looked like boiled horseshit, and it gave Jack another strange flick of nostalgia. Edwin used to look like this all the time.
These days, Robin and Adelaide and even Maud would drag Edwin away from books and make sure that he ate and saw sunlight. He would never have Jack’s figure, or Robin’s, but at least he looked like a healthy slender man instead of a skeleton someone had unearthed in an attic.
Jack took a breath. Runes could wait. This conversation wouldn’t be any easier if he put it off.