“This is what I did last time,” Maud said. Her steadiness was a rope in the storm of Jack’s anticipation. “And then I felt it. Her, I mean. She startled me,” she said apologetically. “Being possessed again reminded me too much of the cemetery. I didn’t think. I pushed her off and we ran.” Her weight bobbed the swing back and forth. “I’m sorry,” she said to the air. “I’m here now.”
Nothing. Nothing for long enough that Jack’s tension began to twist itself into disappointment. Perhaps it had been a trick of the primrose wine. Perhaps Violet had made a mistake.
And then Maud’s shoulders jumped as if she were hiccuping, and she looked sharply down at her hands. She moved in a sudden scramble, nearly unbalancing as she planted her feet on the seat and stood up. She grabbed the overhead railing for support and seemed surprised to only just be able to grasp it. There she stood, riding the sway of the seat, the creak of its suspending chains very loud in the silence.
Jack’s heart clenched. His mother had gone statuelike beside him.
“No need to be sorry,” said the ghost in Maud. Her voice was hesitant and almost a rasp. “I dare say I was twice as startled as you.”
And then she looked at Jack.
The name died in Jack’s mouth. It would have been a question, but there was no question. He knew that smile, sudden as a summer flood, even when made by another girl’s mouth. He found himself unable to say anything at all.
As always, his sister Elsie had no such problem.
“Oh,” she said. The longing there turned at once into a note of overwhelming relief. “Oh, you’ve lived. I’m so glad.” A pause. “Pity you look like the wrong side of a camel. What kicked you in the nose, and why did you deserve it?”
Jack’s laugh felt like spitting out a mouthful of blood. “You can’t talk,” he said. “You’re wearing someone else’s entire face.”
“Jack,” said Lady Cheetham, then lifted a hand to her mouth and laughed as well.
“Her name is Maud,” said Jack. “The medium. She’s—a friend.”
Elsie hesitated. “How … how long has it been?”
Jack had steeled himself for that. “Sixteen years.”
Elsie looked from Jack to their mother, and Maud’s face tightened. “Is Father—”
“He’s well,” said Lady Cheetham quickly. “We’re—we’re all well, darling.”
Elsie absently set her feet off-centre, bending her knees to keep the swing going. She looked without speaking at the others on the grass, pausing only for a blink of near recognition at Edwin. Maud’s face went vague for a few seconds. But it was Elsie again when she looked back at Jack. She pushed some hair behind one ear in a gesture that meant Elsie wanted to escape from a difficult conversation that was her own fault. Jack’s heart ached to see it.
“Stop staring, lump,” she muttered. “I didn’t think I’d see you again. Seemed better that way. I didn’t want to have to—apologise. For leaving.”
“No surprise there,” said Jack. “You always hated apologising.”
“Oh, pot, kettle.” She stuck her tongue out at him. Jack felt very young and very old, both at once.
“You never have to apologise to us,” Lady Cheetham began, but one of Maud’s hands went up quickly.
“It’s me,” said Maud. “She slipped. She’s a lot less definite than Mrs. Navenby was. I think it takes effort, for her to keep hold of me.”
“Yes,” said Elsie. Her voice was fainter again. “It’s like climbing a buttered pole. Sorry, Mother. Jack. I’m so tired.”
Jack’s world rose into his mouth. “Does it hurt?”
Her eyes closed. She took a long, deep breath, as if filling her lungs with the beauty of the afternoon. “No,” she said. “Nothing hurts. And it’s a different sort of tiredness to—before. This is like being close enough to falling asleep that you can’t feel the shape of your body. But I can’t wake myself further. Can’t feel these toes even if I wriggle them.”
“We’ll let you sleep,” said Jack, even though he ached to do nothing of the sort. To stand here forever and talk and talk. “But first—will you tell Mother—tell all of us—what happened under the oak? I won’t bore you with the story,” he said, taking refuge in irony, “but George plans to try again to combine the power of other magicians, and use it himself.”
Elsie’s expression darkened. She lifted a hand to her mouth and made a silent Oh of realisation: no curse. No bind. No more silence. “And you’re going to stop him.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” said Edwin. Elsie jerked her head to look at him. “Elsie, if you can tell us exactly what they tried, and how it felt … anything might help us, at this point.”
She looked back at Jack. He nodded.
So Elsie told them. By the end of it she was slipping, as Maud put it, more frequently and for longer periods, clearly struggling to maintain her foothold in Maud’s mind. But she laid out frankly what John and George had done, how they’d asked the twins to mingle their magic and then tried to use their shared blood to draw upon it. And what she’d done, when she felt the magic twisting and lashing out—when she heard Jack cry out, and panicked. She’d grabbed it all within herself and made the Hall help her hold it there, like a dam built in haste.
Jack couldn’t say what he wanted to say. His tongue was heavy in his mouth even hearing it spoken about by someone else.
But he managed, before he could think too hard about it, to lift a hand and cradlespeak a sign they’d developed very young: a demand to share.
Elsie understood. Of course.
“It did want to be shared,” said her fading voice. “It kept trying to get out, Jack. To go back to you. But it was getting worse.” Maud’s teeth bared in a quick twitch of a wince. “By the end it was so bad—so not what magic should be—that I’m sure the shock of trying to absorb it would have killed you.”
“It killed you,” Jack managed. He was wildly angry with her, and desperately glad to have even this part of her to be angry with. He remembered the bewildered abandonment he’d felt in the last months of her life, when she’d first refused to be touched by him and then refused to have him in the room at all, screaming and throwing things until he left.
Elsie faded from Maud’s expression. It was five endless beats of Jack’s heart before she found her way back again.
“No.” Only a flicker of fire there, but fire nonetheless. “I killed me. I’d told myself I would live with the pain forever if it kept it away from you. But I don’t know if I’d have managed that either. It didn’t matter. Another week and I’d have lost control of it. It had hollowed me out. The wall was so thin.”
This was what Jack hadn’t wanted: to make her relive it. The exhaustion and effort were catching at the sides of her voice now.
“It was one of us or both of us, Jack,” said Elsie. “I’m not sorry.”
Jack nodded, jaw tight. He turned to his mother and touched her arm. “Polly?”