The nick on Jack’s jaw itched all over again. He forced himself not to touch it and went to investigate the food instead. Violet’s cook had never met a vegetable she couldn’t over-boil, but she was a genius with anything that had once been part of an animal. Jack was prepared to accept the necessity of living in Spinet House as glorified bodyguard to Maud and Violet as long as the supply of ham was kept up.
“The boy resists the urge to cut Hawthorn’s throat despite being daily presented with the opportunity,” said Edwin. “There should be an award.”
Oliver was in fact a prodigiously skilled valet for his age and took fierce pride in his work. He was still just terrified enough of accidentally cutting Jack’s throat that it made him shaky. He’d settle down to it in another few weeks.
Jack’s old valet Lovett had served him well for years, but Jack was living in a magical household for the moment. He’d sent Lovett with a glowing reference to a man at his club and had engaged Oliver instead.
Or rather: Oliver had been, like greatness, thrust upon him.
“We’re all here now,” said Maud. “Tell us about the vision, Robin.”
There wasn’t a great deal to tell. Robin had been on the verge of nodding off in a corner of the undersecretary’s house when one of his unsummoned visions of the future burst into his consciousness: Jack himself, stick in hand, recoiling from a magical attack.
“It was very quick and crisp, and left me feeling like someone had been at my temples with a pickaxe. That usually means it’s one of the imminent ones. Just didn’t know how imminent.”
“I can only imagine what the cabbie must have thought of us, bundling in in a tearing rush at dawn and demanding to be driven to an Underground station halfway across the city,” said Adelaide.
“Addy used her maharajah’s-daughter voice on the poor man,” said Robin. “He was quite overwhelmed.”
Adelaide grinned and stopped tapping her ring on the table in order to pile the last of her scrambled eggs onto a fresh piece of toast, then piled a large amount of chutney on top of that.
“This is the fourth vision in a fortnight,” said Edwin. “Always when he’s falling asleep, and they always leave him feeling ghastly. I don’t like it.” He and Robin exchanged a conversation of a glance.
“Edwin’s trying to find a way to suppress them for me,” said Robin.
“Is that wise?” Violet set down her fork. “I hate to be a bully, if they’re getting as bad as all that, but … Robin, you’re one of the few things we have that the other side doesn’t.”
“The other side does have me.” The sleepless night was suddenly visible in the weight of Robin’s jaw. “I’m still under oath of truthful report to the Assembly, and the more the visions intrude on their own, the fewer spare ones I can manage to bring on at will so that I have something harmless to recite for them.”
“I’ll find something,” said Edwin, grim.
Robin gave him a small smile. “I know you will. Buck up.”
Edwin muttered something into his cup of tea, but his free hand turned over when Robin’s own slid against it, and he laced their fingers together. Edwin had never been comfortable with casual touch when Jack knew him. He gave off a miasma that discouraged it—and when intimate touch was involved, he submitted to it with an intensity that set Jack’s teeth on edge. Jack liked his bed partners to push back, and to laugh. Not every tumble had to be approached like the end of the world.
“Speaking of the fourth time in a fortnight,” said Violet, “I’ll have to start giving Dorothy hazard pay, or whatever it is they gave medieval armies. None of my household staff signed up for a siege.”
“Spinet seems to be holding up well,” said Edwin.
“Yes. Though we’re being credited with either more skill or more luck than we’ve had. The man who got in upstairs asked Hawthorn where the knife and the cup were.”
A vaguely depressed silence reigned over the breakfast table. The Last Contract, physical symbol of the fae bargain that centuries ago left magic in the hands of humans, existed as three disguised silver objects. The coin, which had last been seen in the hands of Edwin’s brother, Walter Courcey. The cup, which Violet and Maud had successfully bluffed their way into keeping, on board the Lyric. Since then their enemies had obviously worked out that they’d been left holding a fake.
And the knife. Which quite possibly looked nothing like a knife at present. And which had belonged to Spinet’s previous mistress, Lady Enid; and had therefore been inherited by Violet herself.
Which would be all very well if they could find the damned thing. Spinet was a more difficult house than the average to search from top to bottom. Not least because top and bottom, as well as the points of the compass and many other aspects of spatial geometry, seemed in several parts of the house to be treated more as guidelines than rules.
Jack had grown up on an old magical estate that adhered to old traditions. Spinet House was a young thing, built by a master carpenter-thaumoluthier and his energetically creative wife.
It was a fortress. It was a musical, magical puzzle box.
It was a fucking headache.
And it was partly Jack’s headache, at least until the business of the Last Contract was over. Every day was one day closer to Jack being allowed to escape back to his own townhouse and his old life, where he could once again pretend that magic didn’t exist.
“We should do some more work on the ley lines,” Edwin said to Violet, breaking the silence.
“I thought there weren’t any near here,” said Violet. “Or have you dug out an even older and dustier map to bore me with?”
“Violet,” said Maud.
Violet’s head turned in an irritated motion, as if she were on the verge of snapping at Maud, too, but she caught herself. “Sorry, Edwin. It’s been a busy morning.”
Edwin accepted the apology with as much grace as it had been offered with: not a great deal on either side. The Blyth siblings had the stubbornness of two people who had each adopted a stray cat with a terrible personality and were determined to have them cohabit. They’d made progress. But nobody could yet describe the reserved Edwin and the deliberately extravagant Violet as friendly.
“There aren’t any ley lines that cross Spinet, no, but we know that the knife will be exerting an effect on those close by,” said Edwin. “And I’ve been experimenting with the major London nodes of the line that runs longitudinally through Sutton—I really do think there’s something there, some trick we’re missing that will allow us to stretch the problem of distance—”
And he was off, his own sleepless night apparently not making a whit of difference now that he’d sunk his teeth into an intellectual problem. Both Blyths were listening to him—one with the same green-eyed interest that she swept over the entire world, and the other with the comfortably besotted gaze that said Edwin could be speaking Chinese, or Old French, or the forgotten language of the fae, and Robin would be just as happy to bask in the simple sound of his beloved’s voice.
Jack was bored to tears by the time words like remote catalyst started marching alarmingly through Edwin’s sentences. He met Adelaide’s eye, and she quirked her mouth at him, but was either too loyal or too involved in demolishing her pile of eggs to show him any more sympathy.